Strictly a One-Eyed Jack is the 24th studio album by American singer-songwriter John Mellencamp. The album was released on January 21, 2022, by Republic Records. The album's cover, a portrait of Mellencamp, was painted by Mellencamp's son Speck, who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently the executive director of Southern Indiana Center for the Arts in Seymour, Indiana.

Mellencamp stated that he began working on Strictly a One-Eyed Jack shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and he also told iHeart Radio that most of its songs were written before the pandemic. Recording sessions stopped in March 2020 when the pandemic first began and did not resume for a full year, until March 2021. In April 2021, Mellencamp invited Bruce Springsteen to his Belmont Mall recording studio in Belmont, Indiana to play guitar and sing on a few tracks. The pair recorded one full-fledged duet, "Wasted Days", which became the album's lead single when it was released on September 29, 2021. Springsteen also contributed guitar and background vocals to the album's third single, "Did You Say Such a Thing", and guitar (but no vocals) to "A Life Full of Rain", the record's closing track.

Mellencamp said he approached the album as if all the songs were coming from the voice of a single character. "I realized after a couple, three songs, it was the same voice," he told Forbes. "It sounds silly, and I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times, but it was the same messenger delivering these songs to me. And I realized that this is one guy's story. And I felt that it was important to make sure that this guy was represented properly."