The opening lines of "Pink Houses" set the scene: "There's a Black man with a black cat / Living in a black neighborhood / He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard," the song goes, via American Songwriter. Mellencamp actually saw that very thing with his own eyes: one day he was driving along Interstate 65 through Indianapolis when he spotted a Black man and his black cat sitting on a lawn chair in front of a pink house.
The juxtaposition of a man's home being within feet of 70-mph traffic and his apparent acceptance of his fate struck Mellencamp. "I thought, 'Wow, is this what life can lead to? Watching the f***in' cars go by on the interstate?," he said. As he fleshed out the lyrics, the song took on a deeper meaning: a look at the demise of the American Dream. "The American dream had pretty much proven itself as not working anymore," he said. Or to put it another way, as explained via Indianapolis Monthly, the hook, "Ain't that America," is actually code for "Ain't that some bull***t."
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