Top Ten Songs by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan, the poet laureate of rock music, has written some of the greatest songs of all time. Whether in the form of a send-off to a former friend, a protest song, or a feel-good ballad immortalizing a good relationship, Dylan consistently delivers interesting, often timeless music. The following is a list of some of Dylan’s best from early in his career.
10) Lay Lady Lay, on the country music album Nashville Skyline, features a softer-voiced Bob Dylan (he had temporarily quit smoking during his recuperation from a near-fatal motorcycle accident). It is a very interesting and very, well, strange song. At once haunting and tender, it is one of his best. One thing about Bob D: his most impressive or hardest-hitting songs, rhetorical-wise, are about women. Lay Lady Lay is one of the tender, mellow ones. More on this later.
9) Masters of War (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), is an unabashed protest song. No rhetorical or lyrical pussy-footing here. Dylan lays out exactly how he feels about war and the concomitant wartime profiteers. No oblique or cryptic lyrics to be found in this song. It resonates today.
8) Ballad of a Thin Man on Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan’s second electric album. People did not know how to take it. The lyrics are about as cryptic and surrealistic as you can get, yet are interesting and make sense, sort of. Pounding piano and a strong organ riff carry the song, but amidst the whirlpool of sound, Dylan’s delivery and timing shine.
7) Blowing in the Wind (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), perhaps Dylan’s most famous song, is a cry for peace, love, and equality in the generalized, vague, and all-encompassing vein of John Lennon’s later Imagine. I mention it because it is a great song and one worth listening to.
6) A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (The Times They Are A-Changin’). Perhaps Dylan at his most poetic, the singer uses powerful universal natural images, hinting at cataclysmic events. Song rose to popularity right around the time of the Cuban missile crisis, a period in history when atomic war seemed, to some, imminent, or at least a possibility. The lyrics are powerful and paint an epic picture of lost innocence over a backdrop of simple chord changes.
5) Shelter from the Storm. From the album Blood on the Tracks, this is Bob Dylan’s song about the redemptive power of women. Really good song. Fast paced and positive. Dylan sings, “Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm. Come in, she said I’ll give ya’ shelter from the storm.” I guess Dylan had time for at least one good relationship.
4) Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan). Fast finger-picking and more melancholy than harsh lyrics, Dylan in character as twentieth-century folk troubador uses folk images to depict a failed modern-day relationship. Dylan delivers the final blow with casually thrown out lyrics, delivered almost as an aside, saying to his former lover, “You just sort of wasted my precious time. Don’t think twice it’s alright.” Ouch.
3) It Ain’t Me Babe (Another Side of Bob Dylan). Classic Dylan. He basically says, “Look honey, I’m not going to be your perfect man because I’m human. I’m going to be me. Get outta here.”
2) Positively 4th Street. A lyrically-driven song directed to someone Dylan sees as a charlatan, someone he claims “would rather see me paralyzed.” “Why don’t you just come out once and scream it,” he asks, begging for a little truth, a removal of the mask of politics and politeness. He obviously was upset by the person the song is directed to, and when Dylan is in that state of mind, great songs just seem to appear.
1) Like a Rolling Stone (Highway 61 Revisited). The greatest rock n’ roll songs ever written. Dylan’s clever and razor sharp lyrics at points are delivered in staccato bursts and at others are slowly drawn out for emphasis, displaying Dylan’s rhetorical mastery and ease with poetic verse. Accented by a swirling organ riff, Dylan’s language is a weapon, at once cutting and instructive (as in, don’t be like the person I am singing to in this song). Syllables are stretched or shortened and delivery is expertly manipulated, all to convey emotion. Pay-offs are carefully placed to move the story. Dylan is in complete control of the ship the whole time even as the background noise approaches chaos and threatens mutiny. Form meets function, as the voice, the envenomed lyrics, the sonic landscape, and the energy coalesce into a great song. Like many of Bob Dylan’s most powerful songs, ‘Rolling Stone’ is about a relationship with a woman, but also, more universally, a generation of people dealing with the brutal reality of relationships, hypocrisy, and the shattering of life’s illusions. In other words, it’s about growing up.
