Worst Dylan Songs -- sez TIME Magazine

there was a rad video of dylan singing "someone's got a hold of my heart" (which turned into "tight connection") during the infidels sessions that was so great. dylan's people have really cracked down on youtube, huh? lame-o.

I mean, it's a mass market magazine so it doesn't surprise me that the editors found the ugliest photos of Bob in a Miami Vice jacket and said "lol weren't the eighties horrible?"

I refuse to be complacent about Worst lists

there was a rad video of dylan singing "someone's got a hold of my heart" (which turned into "tight connection") during the infidels sessions that was so great. dylan's people have really cracked down on youtube, huh? lame-o.

Indeed. Gone too are his blinding early-80s Letterman performances, the kind that made you want to shout in Bob's face, "WHY DIDN'T YOU MAKE THE RECORD LIKE THAT?!"

are we to vote for the worst song on this list, or the best?

best: "Forever Young"
worst: I don't hate any of these. I am likeliest to skip "Rainy Day Women" but that's because I'm likelier to play Blonde On Blonde than Dylan or Self-Portrait, or to play a boot with it rather than one of the other songs on this list.

worst Dylan 60s songs would be better: I'd vote for much of The Times They Are A-Changin', plus any talking blues because once I've heard them once, the (lame) jokes have no further impact.

all the tired horses and rainy day women are amazing. fuck this shit.

dunno any of the other songs except we are the world, which is just silly

no wait, forever young, that is pretty terrible

voting "Forever Young" since it's the most full-on boring

Gone too are his blinding early-80s Letterman performances
on some other dylan thread the dude who played bass (?) in that band showed up and told some stories.

ha, desire is my favorite dylan album -- i even like 'joey.' 'sara' is probably his single most wrenching vocal performance, and 'one more cup of coffee' is perfect pensive late-night driving music.

am i wrong, or did they ignore the born-again albums entirely? those are still pretty awful. 'gotta serve somebody' is easily his worst hit.

yeah sorta surprising. though i think slow train coming is pretty great. the other two, less great.

Street-Legal has a few stinkers, especially the one that goes -

Can you cook
can you sew
can you make flowers grow
can you understand my pain?

sung as if he were held at gunpoint.

on some other dylan thread the dude who played bass (?) in that band showed up and told some stories.

Yeah, I saw that! Cool stuff. Frustrating that Dylan didn't hang onto that band.

someone probably told him they were good.

Street-Legal has a few stinkers

Yes. Changing Of The Guards and Where Are You Tonight? are two of his alltime best. The rest...not so much.

xp i dunno, i can see why -- no matter how good that letterman band sounded -- that dylan would go with tried/true stadium rockers for a big stadium tour. as cool as it would've been for him to go out with a punky/spiky LA band. believe it or not, real live to the contrary, there are some good 1984 euro tour performances.

"joey" can hang (mostly bc of that awful chorus) but the rest of Desire is good-to-great

'gotta serve somebody' is easily his worst hit.

NO

love that fuckin record

As for the Christian records, there's a song called "Something's Burning, Baby" on Empire Burlesque which boasts martial beats, Dylannettes yelling in your ear, and a synthesizer stolen from a Laura Branigan single that conjures hellfire more convincingly than anything on STC or Saved.

I wish Shot of Love was a better throwaway; he wrote better junk than "Trouble" and "Heart of Mine."

believe it or not, real live to the contrary, there are some good 1984 euro tour performances.

Seems like there should be, with that lineup. Ian McLagan's autobio All The Rage has some hilarious stories about the tour, like Dylan asking Ian for a list of songs he'd like to play, telling Ian, "Yeah, let's do those," and then never playing a single one of them for the whole tour.

"Rainy Day Women" stopped me from listening to Dylan for 20-ish years so this is an easy choice for me.

I'd vote for Ballad In Plain D as the worst Dylan song.

xxxp ha, i should read that. mclagan probably has a lot of good stories. check the barcelona 1984 date. there are some really great performances on there. does seem like dylan was trying to his best to mess with his high-priced stadium rockers on that tour -- he's definitely teaching them some of the songs onstage.

Are we supposed to vote for the best? That would be "Forever Young" obv.

thought the best geir track here would be "all the pretty horses"...pure melody. no rhythm. perfect.

Street-Legal has a few stinkers, especially the one that goes -

Can you cook
can you sew
can you make flowers grow
can you understand my pain?

sung as if he were held at gunpoint.

lol!

add a thumpa thumpa to all for Eric

Lawrence from Felt on some of those later Dylan records:

"What I liked about…Bob Dylan were the brilliant lyrics, but after ‘Desire’ why didn’t Dylan use synths instead of saxes and soul backing singers? He wore flares, didn’t acknowledge the new wave, and that dated him"

anyway...

Didn't he listen to Empire Burlesque? DOR Dylan!

evidently not? i've never understood that quote. unless he meant that he felt dylan came too late in the game and really shoulda been making bleep-bloop-bloop records when he was immersed in his born-again period

Mozambique from Desire is pretty terrible. Patronising colonialist drivel. Lester Bangs' demolition of that album is a great read.

did dylan ever acknowledge disco in any sense btw?

some of the 78 live stuff is pretty disco-ed out. "shelter from the storm" gets a funky re-working.

did dylan ever acknowledge disco in any sense btw?

the Street-Legal tour employed a bongo player. There may have been a disco ball.

Mozambique from Desire is pretty terrible. Patronising colonialist drivel. Lester Bangs' demolition of that album is a great read.

yeah srsly. Even if you put Bangs' reading aside, you have to deal with how execrably Dylan sings.

i like bangs and all but his focus on how 'joey' was undermined by its subject being an asshole seemed sort of blinkered to me -- i mean, jesse james was a bad guy too!

had just about enough of this desire bashing
live version of mozambique from 76. http://www.bigozine1a.com/MPX3/BDsanant/BDsanant03.mp3
sure the lyrics are dumb! i don't think that's entirely unintentional.

i used to own a copy of street legal and once borrowed a copy of desire from a friend, but never managed to get into anything on them, except maybe for changing of the guards and one other song which escapes me. but now i'm thinking maybe i should revisit them, even if only out of perverse curiosity, b/c this was like 15 years ago or more when i first tried listening to them. but i imagine they would still fall flat on my ears. i'm someone who never appreciated blood on the tracks, other than you're a big girl now. i like his loud albert hall-ish rock stuff and nashville skyline and self-portrait, but much of the other time in listening to him i kinda just want him to shut up. oh, and oh mercy. i feel like i should check out that one properly

street legal is pretty flawed, but i like most of it. actually "no time to think" might be one of my candidates for worst ever Dylan song, now that I think of it. but i only came around to street legal when it was remixed in the late 90s -- it sounded so much better then!

"Senor" is the best thing on the album by some distance, and it really took off when I saw him perform it in '05.

yeah there's something kind of silly about senor as a whole, but dylan really sells it -- all the versions I've heard, you can tell he really enjoys singing it.

well, it's a set of Dylan-parody lines looking for a home, right? The world's best Dylan imitator writing his own Dylan song.

lincoln county rooooad ... or armageddon?! haha

did dylan ever acknowledge disco in any sense btw?

I've just spent 15 minutes looking for something I can't find: a late-'70s interview where someone asks him if his new music's disco, and he says something like, "No, the Village People are disco, I'm not disco." He says it in a way that's funny and playful, not resentful, and in a way that made it seem like he was very aware of what was happening elsewhere musically. (I thought it would have been the '78 Rolling Stone interview, but it's not there.)

There's this, though, from his '84 Rolling Stone interview: "I've seen a lot of stuff written about me. People must be crazy. I mean responsible people. Especially on that Street Legal tour. That band we assembled then, I don't think that will ever be duplicated. It was a big ensemble. And what did people say? I mean, responsible people who know better. All I saw was "Bruce Springsteen" because there was a saxophone player. And it was "disco" — well, there wasn't any disco in it."

He seemed a little less playful at that point. Earlier in the same interview he mentioned Cisco Houston.

i like bangs and all but his focus on how 'joey' was undermined by its subject being an asshole seemed sort of blinkered to me -- i mean, jesse james was a bad guy too!

yeah but if you write a song "About" jesse james that's just a bunch of self-pitying cliches, contrasting them with the actual facts of james is a good way to point out what crap it is

I love all those Emmylou Harris harmonies on Desire.

Not Heard "Wiggle Wiggle" so in my imagination it sounds a lot like Roy Orbison's "Ooby Dooby".

Does it?

I love Mozambique - it's funny.

Classic - Sara, Isis
V good - Hurricane, Mozambique, One More Cup of Coffee
OK - Oh Sister, Romance in Durango, Black Diamond Bay
Dud - Joey

I like Desire, but the tracklisting is always Hurricane, Isis, Mozambique, Coffee, skiiiip, Sara

Hurricane probs my favourite Dylan song.

Is this Lester Bangs takedown of Desire available online anywhere? Sounds fascinating.

"Rainy Day Women" is the worst? Are you motherfucking kidding me? Like srsly?

Also, "what a fucking coffin" comment from upthread is fucking classic.

Wow, lot of fuckings in this post. fuckingfuckingfucking

One of the greatest things about hearing "Rainy Day Women" on the radio in '66 [I would imagine, since I was a year away from being born] would've been realizing that it opens EXACTLY like "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha" and that AM radio could find airtime for both in the same summer.

And, of course, "Mouldy Old Dough"

(although that was not the same summer, of course)

"Mouldy Old Dough" about a million times as good, of course

On the "Worst Lieutenant Pigeon songs" poll, it came last.

I've realized I just don't like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" at all.

i actually really like the version on the Live 1975 in the bootleg series..

ILM voters otm.

I suspect a lot of people were voting for the one they liked the best. I may have done so myself.

calling rainy day women the worst dylan song is so disrespectful to his catalogue

(ballad in plain e 4eva)

all the tired horses and tight connection are both really great imo

ILM voters otm.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 11 November 2017 12:28 (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Loving these Worst Songs Ever pieces btw. LOL Eagles fans.

Quinn < Stoned

All the Tired Horses is one of my top 10 Dylan songs >:(

― ◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝ (Moka), miércoles 25 de mayo de 2011 22:03 (six years ago)

Still is and also Wigwam is in there. Sorry.

I'd understand if someone had Hattie Carroll as a worst..

Zanzinger wasn't his name, he didn't strike Battle with his cane or anything else, apart from that: enough happened for real that there wasn't need to change details, etc.

It isn't really a candidate for worst, but I'd understand etc..

Hattie not battle, stupid spelling corrector!

Zantzinger, fine, but he did hit her with his cane. Great song.

"hattie carroll" is the masterpiece of his protest era imo, light-years ahead of the more famous stuff

never SAT ONCE
at the head of the table
SHE JUST CLEANED UP
all the food from the table
and emptied the ashtrays
ON A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL

can't believe time magazine didn't throw in even one boomer troll pick btw. how utterly joyless. a-changin's always a good one.

"forever young"'s a feint in that direction i guess.

Tangled up in blue is just so bad

yes also Like a Rolling Stone, in fact Bob Dylan is a bad songwriter, come to think of it most canonical art is trash esp rock from 60s and 70s