"Pink Houses" is the state-of-our-union anthem that John Mellencamp likes to boast about, but the real class-awareness beef of 1983's Uh-Huh is in "Authority Song" ("Call up my preacher... / He said, 'You don't need no strength, you need to grow up, son'")--not to mention the kidding cynicism of "Crumblin' Down" and the Mellencamp-John Prine collaboration "Jackie O." With his Stonesy band crackling behind him, the newly minted superstar also shows that he gets the joke of his "serious business" on "Play Guitar," which might have been the album's fourth hit single if not for its admonition to "forget all about that macho shit." --Rickey Wright