“I Need A Lover” by John Mellencamp

"I Need a Lover" was John Mellencamp's first single, released in 1978 when he was still calling himself Johnny Cougar, and it first appeared on A Biography, an album that never came out in the States. He wrote it himself, and John Punter produced and engineered it for Riva.

Australia bit first, sending it to No. 5, so it got a second life on the 1979 follow-up John Cougar, aimed at American ears; that December it climbed to No. 28 on the Hot 100, his first US top 40 hit. Cash Box heard gutsy singing and a stomping, hell-raising beat, and Record World called it an explosive rocker, but Mellencamp said it was really about a sad friend at Concordia College who was stuck living in his bedroom. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine later called it his first good song.

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