Well you can make whatever posts you want, but I asked Paul for clarification at the beginning of this thread, see my question and his response:

https://www.musicbabble.net/posts/4baff7ef-7ed1-4cab-80cf-e64a40329d78

So Mellencamp’s career is just magically the same, Springsteen gets to make all of his albums but the one we’re singling out (regardless of how improbable this all is) so if BTR or BITUSA doesn’t exist then you can imagine a different reception to everything that came after the deleted album.