“Cherry Bomb” by John Mellencamp

"Cherry Bomb" was the second single John Mellencamp pulled from The Lonesome Jubilee, his ninth album, going out in the US in October 1987 on the heels of "Paper in Fire", with "Shama Lama Ding Dong" on the flip. Mellencamp wrote it alone and produced it with Don Gehman, who engineered and mixed it with David Leonard.

It's a warm, wistful look back at his teenage years and the nights spent hanging around the Last Exit Teen Club, and the trick is in who gets to tell it: on the second verse, backing singer Crystal Taliefero and band members Toby Myers and Mike Wanchic take turns at the lead with him. Mellencamp told GQ in 2022 that he got the idea from Sly and the Family Stone, whose hits he grew up on in junior high.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.