John Mellencamp just releasedThe Songbook: 50 Years of Song and Poetry, and it might be the most personal thing he’s ever put out. The book collects five decades of lyrics and poetry alongside handwritten drafts, personal photos, chords, and notes. Even the pages are designed to look coffee-stained, with rough-cut edges and margin doodles throughout. It’s published by Rizzoli New York and built to feel like an archival collection you stumbled across in someone’s attic.
The foreword comes from Stephen King, who recalls first hearing“I Need a Lover”playing in a laundry. That detail alone tells you what kind of book this is: intimate, unfiltered, and full of small moments that shaped the music.
It also follows Mellencamp’s earlier art books from 1998 and 2022, which means this is a natural next step for an artist who’s spent as much time with a paintbrush as a guitar. Fans and collectors get a rare look at the creative process, and it makes a pretty great conversation piece. So, what’s the one artist whose notebooks you’d actually pay to read?
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Local Lawton
Local Lawton is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.