Mr. Mellencamp has caught flak from some of his fans, and the Silverado spot, which has been in heavy rotation on sports broadcasts since it was first shown during last fall’s World Series, has spawned some controversy. The ad mixes images of the Statue of Liberty and Rosa Parks with footage from Hurricane Katrina and the Vietnam War. A columnist at Slate.com called the commercial’s blend of patriotism and tragedy, in service of selling a product, “exploitative” and “wrong.”

Image The singer John Mellencamp in Bloomington, Ind.; Mr. Mellencamp, who has lived in Indiana all his life, often writes about small-town life. Credit... Mark Cornelison for The New York Times

Chain-smoking through an interview in a sprawling suite at the Carlyle Hotel (he and his wife, the model Elaine Irwin, were upgraded because “the commode in our first room was broken”), Mr. Mellencamp maintained that the ad’s downbeat tone was his own decision. “Part of the deal I made was: O.K., I’ll do this, but I’m in charge. Make it look like a John Mellencamp video. I don’t want to see ‘Our Country’ as rah-rah flag waving. Let’s show the flood, let’s show the war, let’s show the whole thing. The fact that they rolled a truck out at the end made no difference to me.”

Bill Ludwig, chief creative officer of Chevrolet’s ad agency, Campbell-Ewald, said in a statement that he hoped the campaign would evoke “the bruises and scars that have shaped our nation."

One question now is what impact a commercial that has been running for months can have on sales of a new album. Some executives at Universal Republic, Mr. Mellencamp’s label, are concerned that the exposure peaked too soon, and that the audience has already tired of the song. Mr. Mellencamp admits that the situation has put radio programmers “in a position they’ve never been in before,” adding that he never anticipated that the ad would be played so frequently. “They sure pounded it,” he said with a chuckle. “I had no idea.”

“Our Country” illustrates one side of “Freedom’s Road,” with its swing-for-the-fences themes exemplified by titles like “The Americans.” The album’s most striking songs, though, display a more intimate depiction of the small-town life that Mr. Mellencamp, 55 and a lifelong Indiana resident, knows so well. The acoustic “Rural Route” is an account of a crystal meth-fueled murder in which the victim’s body was found at the edge of his parents’ property.