People: John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen Team Up for the First Time on 'Wasted Days'
John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen have joined forces for the very first time!
The music icons have teamed up for a track called "Wasted Days," the first single off of Mellencamp's upcoming 25th studio album. The song was released Wednesday alongside an official music video, which the pair filmed in New Jersey earlier this month.
Mellencamp, 69, begins the first verse of the song by pondering, "How many days are lost in vain?"
"Who's counting now these last remaining years?" the musician asks in the lyrics. "How many minutes do we have ahead?"
Springsteen, 72, touches on the emotional aspect of time in the second verse. "How much sorrow is there left to climb? How many promises are worth the time? And who on earth is worth our time? Is there a heart here that I can call mine?"
After each verse, the duo comes together for a powerful chorus: "We watch our lives just fade away to more wasted days."
The video, directed and produced by filmmaker and frequent Springsteen collaborator Thom Zimny, begins with a young boy playing with a toy airplane while staring out a window.
The same child appears in several other shots throughout the video, from sitting on a porch with a box of toys to playing with his airplane in a grassy field. His images are interchanged with brief clips of various adults gazing off into the distance.
As the song progresses, Mellencamp visits each spot where the little boy once was. At the end, the child is seen walking inside from the porch with a guitar in hand, followed by Mellencamp and his own instrument.
In the final verse, the singers alternate lines detailing just how precious time can truly be. "How can a man watch his life go down the drain?" sings Mellencamp before Springsteen adds, "How many moments has he lost today?"
"And who among us could ever see clear?" Mellencamp responds.
"The end is coming, it's almost here," Springsteen concludes.
Mellencamp's album is expected to be released in 2022.