The point about Dylan’s voice is that it is his voice and that his lyrics are written for that voice. Think of this from “Tangled up in Blue”: “I helped her out of a jam I guess/But I used a little too much force”, or this from “Where Are You Tonight?”: “There’s a lion in the road, there’s a demon escaped/There’s a million dreams gone, there’s a landscape being raped.” That most perfect singer Ella Fitzgerald could sing those lines and even then it wouldn’t be as good as Bob, with his withering irony, his amused regrets, his strange visions, his endless stock of stories and, as the critic Christopher Ricks has pointed out, his superb use of rhyme. Dylan writes songs that can only really be covered by himself.
Friday, May 21, 2021
Appreciation …
… Bob Dylan at 80: Perfect voices don’t survive the years. Dylan’s imperfections adapt. (Hat tip, dave Lull.)
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Only covered by himself? I suspect that a deal to pay $1 for every broadcast of "All Along the Watchtower" in Dylan's version and receive $1 for every broadcast of Jimmy Hendrix's version would leave one comfortably ahead. The same might be the case for the Dylan v. The Byrds on "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man" and Dylan v. (was it?) Peter, Paul, and Mary's version of "The Times, They Are a Changing".
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