Bob Dylan just turned 70 years old. As a tribute. Rolling Stone made a list of his 70 best songs. How many other artists have written enough great songs to make it possible to make such a list? Anyway, here’s my top 10:
Tangled Up In Blue
It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding
Simple Twist of Fate
Shelter From the Storm
Positively 4th Street
Forever Young
Idiot Wind
It Ain’t Me, Babe
Like a Rolling Stone
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
I guess it’s kind of obvious that Blood on the Tracks is my favorite Dylan album. What are your favorities?
Tombstone Blues
Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream
Cold Irons Bound
Tangled Up in Blue
This Wheel’s On Fire
Dear Landlord
Chimes of Freedom
4th Time Around
The Man in Me
On a Night Like This
With Dylan, as with the Beatles but very few others, it’s impossible to name just 10. Then there’s the Dylan version vs the cover version type list, as often he had the bare bones of a song which were brought to life by others. I’ll mix the two:
My Back Pages (Byrds)
All I Really Want to Do (Byrds or Chér)
Blowin’ In the Wind (PP&M)
Lay Lady Lay
Just Like A Woman
If Not for You (G Harrison or Olivia N-J)
All Along the Watchtower (Hendrix)
Love is Just a Four-Letter Word (Baez)
It Ain’t Me Babe (Turtles)
Stuck Inside Mobile with Memphis Blues Again
If you like Dylan Covers check out Dylanesque by Bryan Ferry, actually any of his Dylan covers are awesome.
As Arlo Guthrie said at one of his concerts, “It’s hard to think of a bad Dylan song, and while we’re on the subject couldn’t you have given me just one!”
My favorite line of his in the last couple of years was when he was at the White House and whispered to Obama, “You can call me Zimmy”
And then there’s favorite rock movie “The Last Waltz”
Not a fan, sorry 🙁
lyrics
“you must”: i felt an intensely authoritative tone in this text, and agree completely.
Dylan is a great songwriter, but has a unique singing style, and should not be allowed to get near a harmonica, which he plays with terrible wretched lack of talent.
If you have trouble appreciating the man himself, listen to Joan Baez sings Dylan. She is a wonderful singer, and was once a lover of Dylan. She does wonderful things with North Country Blues, Boots of Spanish Leather, and many other great songs.
When The Ship Comes In
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Like A Rolling Stone
Mr. Tambourine Man
Bob Dylan’s Dream
All Along The Watchtower
Ballad Of Hollis Brown
Dear Landlord
Desolation Row
Masters Of War
I Shall Be Released
Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie
I almost put Hollis Brown on my list because it’s such a great song. But I like to listed to Tom Thumb’s Blues more.
Dear Landlord shows up again!
Really, this is my #1 under-discussed Dylan tune.
Weird synchronicities have been piling up as of late. Just yesterday, I shuffled around town listening to Dylan more carefully than usual, without ever having suspected that the guy was about to turn 70. The authors of “Acid Dreams,” Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain spent a few pages on Dylan to discuss his impact on 60’s culture. The two great transition “acid” albums were both released in 1965, “Bringing It All Back Home,” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” This quote is most juicy. Phil Ochs remarked, “During this time, Dylan on stage..was LSD.” Good stuff. So, in answer to your question, the two albums named are revolutionary and beautiful enough for me. If we could only change all the birthers and teabaggers into blissed out flower children, we’d be on to something righteous and holy, again, in this country. That’s a spiritual revival I could support.
Y’know, more than a few teabaggers probably were blissed out flower children. Just goes to show that some folks just go where the wind blows, if the hype is good enough.
The style itself is nothing; what matters is the soul.
The People’s Poet, Gil Scott-Heron, died Friday.
Talk about a National treasure….
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Blowin in the Wind
What I like best about Bob Dylan is that he’s done his life and career his way. He never let the machine compromise him or play him. He’s playing everyone else when they/we try to label him or pigeonhole him as one thing or another.
Hey, if you can piss off a pacifist like Pete Seeger, then you’re really making a statement.
Actually appreciate Gil Scott-Heron more than Dylan. There are songs of Dylan’s I like (nobody’s mentioned a later Dylan, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” which even Guns N Roses didn’t manage to ruin), but many more that do nothing for me. I’m always reminded of an old Doonesbury strip where Jimmy (Trudeau’s parody of a rock star) meets Dylan, who tells him, “Hey, I was just trying to make it rhyme, man.”
“Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” would be my second favorite Dylan song, followed by “Lay Lady Lay”. After that I’m like you. Little of it appeals to me in any way. Then again, hype and mystique have never impressed me much, no matter who the artist is. He gets a nod from me for playing the herd like, well, herd animals should be played.
Ditto on Gil Scott-Heron
I like the sound and the band on Blood on the Tracks quite a bit, but for me Dylan isn’t so much about the music as the incredible writing. Here’s just one example of a song that packs so much imagery and wit into such a tight space.
I don’t know anyone else who writes like that, or that even comes close. That’s why people call him our era’s William Shakespeare instead of some musician.
Beautifully written, but completely of the moment.
Can’t imagine what the average 20-something might think of the direct references to ’60s mass media/politics.
It’s a flower, not a monument.
Showing my age…
All Along The Watchtower
Highway 61 Revisited
Visions Of Johanna
Mr Tambourine Man
I Shall Be Released
Tangled Up In Blue
Like A Rolling Stone
A Hard Rains A-gonna Fall
Blowin’ In The Wind
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Million Dollar Bash
Like Brodie, one of my favorite songs (and probably the favorite song) is “Stuck Inside Of Mobile”; my favorite album is BLONDE ON BLONDE. I can’t count 10 top songs off the top of my head, although I have to confess that I only had (and still have) all of his early LPs (bought in the late 1970’s) up through BLONDE ON BLONDE; I didn’t follow his later music.
In a documentary about the HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED sessions (on cable or NPR?), I was always struck by Al Kooper talking about how he was brought in as a guitarist, but he told the producer something to the effect, “You’ve got MIKE BLOOMFIELD – what do you need me for?” So he sat down at the organ; Kooper made it sound as if he’d never touched a keyboard before. Then he goes on in life as a great keyboard player. (According to Wikipedia, he had played organ with Dylan before, so he must have been fairly accomplished at the time on keyboard – perhaps his memory was playing tricks on him in the documentary.)
The message is the thing about Dylan’s lyrics and music. The only thing I ever criticized was his style. A Minnesota kid singing with an Appalachian accent was just too unreal.
Akin to Mick Jagger taking on African American inflections.
Weird hero worship/fantasy projection that gives authentic flavor.
One of the things about the 1960s was that young folks were trying to escape the tyranny of Ozzie and Harriet culture. Whether in Britain or the US. For many white kids, it was “Negro” music that did this. In my South Carolina high school in 1964, the Isley Brothers’ Shout! was the overwhelming best song of the year. And aspiring bands tried to sing like them, even though they were all white boys. For a kid from an iron mining town in Minnesota, the realities are not that much different than those of a kid from a coal mining town in Kentucky or West Virginia.
Taking it to New York City — that was unreal. But that is what aspiring musicians had to do then. Fortunately, he found some producers who liked his style.
It seems strange to me to consider Dylan’s work in terms of individual songs. I can rank albums, but not songs.
That said, how could a left-leaning blogger such as yourself forget to mention “Hurricane” as a candidate for the top ten?
Agreed, it’s great prose & of course right on in its message — but musically boring! Maybe that’s why.
probably because the latest I read about the case was that the Dude was actually guilty. And it’s not a great song musically.
A good book about all that – “Lazarus and The Hurricane.”
It was another world.
Bob did the best he could within his limitations. I remember him singing “Lord, lord, they shot Fred Hampton down.” Fred and Rubin were guilty of being black at the wrong time in a culture that needed bogeymen besides the DFH.
Where did you read he was guilty? I found a large number of links on a quick search, but they seemed clearly biased, as in stank to high heaven.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Along with Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot and a very few others…one of America’s greatest poets.
Its greatest reciter of that poetry. Except for maybe Sinatra.
And without a doubt the only poet since Shakespeare to actually capture the attention of an entire culture.
Salutations, Zimmy.
You de man.
AG
as already said, I can’t even trim my very favorites to 10. I’m with you about Blood on the Tracks.
among those not mentioned yet –
Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright
Quinn The Eskimo (not a great song, but whence my handle).
It ain’t me babe
Tomorrow is another day
Boots of Spanish leather
All along the watchtower
In no particular order, my favorites are:
Like a Rolling Stone (actually this one’s my very favorite)
Tombstone Blues & Ballad of a Thin Man (flat-out badass all the way through)
Tangled Up in Blue (I have a weakness for Blood on the Tracks too)
Cold Irons Bound & Down in the Flood, “Masked & Anonymous” versions (I’m 34–I’ve grown up with the newer stuff)
All Along the Watchtower (putting the first verse last is cool)
Things Have Changed (again, Cranky Old Dylan is “my” Dylan)
Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (funniest shit ever)
Tell Me Momma & Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat (both as live 1966 versions)
Lonesome Day Blues/Cry A While/Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (I love Love and Theft)
Not Dark Yet & Highlands (love Time Out of Mind too)
One More Cup of Coffee
Blind Willie McTell (it gives me the creeps)
Dark Eyes (because I interviewed Patti Smith in 1997 and IIRC she covered this)
I’ll stop there because I could go on way, way too much.
Asking for my favorite Dylan songs is like asking the same things about the Beatles. Could we narrow the request down to which songs from a specific year?
I wasn’t a rock n’roll Buddy Holly-Elvis Presley girl back in the day. I was a MJQ, Miles Davis “Sketches of Spain” jazz kinda girl with a weird side taste for real ol’ country like Flatt & Skruggs. I guess I liked minor keys.
Back in those ancient days there were music stores that had glass-walled “listening rooms” where you could play albums to decide what you’d like to buy. I picked up “Freewheelin” cause he looked kinda cute huddled up on that Greenwich Village Street. He had that nasal FAKE hillbilly sound but it was the poetry that got me! His songs almost always read better than they listen.
I actually wore down the grooves on “John Wesley Harding” and had to buy another LP. “Nothing is revealed”. Ha! I was sure trying to untangle all that imagery and make sense of it.
So, no, sorry, I fail. I can’t pick out 10 favorites.
Some of Dylan’s songs are so intertwined with the times that it is hard to make an artistic judgment without it being shaded by the impact on the political culture. And in the South, this is a key point. The first crack in racist assumptions for white Southerners during the civil rights movement often turned on the key verse in Blowing in the Wind. Indeed, had Peter, Paul & Mary not done a cover of that song on an early album, most of us would not have looked for what else Bob Dylan was writing about.
Others Southerners became aware of him because of the nasal voice singing “Everybody must get stoned.” This was especially true at Southern “party schools”.
Others became aware of his duet with Johnny Cash on the Nashville Skyline album and sought out additional work – like John Wesley Harding.
Guess that most folks’ selections of the “best” songs are intimately related to when they first became aware of his music. And the poetry in his lyrics that defies a superficial reading.
And his uncanny ability to transcend the stereotyped genres of popular music. Talking blues is the roots of hip-hop, and Dylan did some good talking blues forms; I would not be surprised at all if he did a straight-up hip-hop album.
For many, listening to his music is an acquired taste. Their friends played it so much that eventually they got what it was that was speaking to their friends. But now in the days of iPods only a viral YouTube among friends can duplicate that social interaction that was the mainstay of culture from the 1950s onward.
You might tell that I’m not into the “ten best” list as serious thought; it’s a fun entertainment. A better way to understand Dylan’s music is to listen to it all and see the interplay of changes and continuity and how it plays against the times in which it was written. For me, the continuity is how anticipatory Dylan’s music is of shifts in American culture; there is a canary in the coal mine aspect about that.
Now for the recreational top ten list in no particular order:
Blowing in the Wind
Masters of War
God on Our Side
Love Minus Zero, No Limit
Maggie’s Farm
A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall
Talking World War II Blues (you’re of my generation if you understand all of the cultural references)
Country Pie (classic R&B picking)
Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat
Chimes of Freedom
I’m not even a Dylan fan, but now that I think about it, here’s a few
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (surprised it isn’t on more lists- is Axl Rose to blame?)
Isis
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
Baby Let Me Follow You Down
All I Really Want To Do
Make You Feel My Love
Gates Of Eden
If Not For You
Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine
Just Like A Woman
Shelter From The Storm
Mr. Tambourine Man
Queen Jane Approximately
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
It’s Alright Ma
Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright
A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall
Desolation Row
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
Jokerman
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Lay Lady Lay
Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
Maggie’s Farm
I’d Have You Anytime (with George Harrison)