Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks poll

well yeah

Would love to know what Tim Drummond thought.

would love to introduce a non-English speaker to this album to help with pronunciation

This and Murmur

lol Alfred

"Love is so simple"
To quote a phRAAASE

People talking about the singing being top-notch are otm. It's if during his vocal experiments with various types of bellowing and crooning he accidentally circled back to a version of his singing style on Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde, so you are getting overlapping Dylans, like an episode of Star Trek in which they go through an ion storm or The Gate on the Edge of Forever and end up interacting with their younger selves.

whereas Street-Legal is his nadir as a vocalist.

I really like the Rolling Thunder Revue version of Shelter From The Storm with the yelling and slide guitar etc., and the full-band, more country arrangement from the 90s that I think was posted here. I didn't like the album much, but that has to do with what a contrarian Dylan fan I am.
Same here. That's one of my favorite Dylan vocals.

I ran into the fortune-teller, she said be-WARE of lightning that might STRYYYYAAIK
I haven't known peace and quiet for so long I can't remember what it's LIYEEEEK

Maclaine and Rambo

lol

While we're doing phonetic spelling, I challenge anyone to render all the different pronunciations of "idiot."

ee-YEAAAH-dee-UH
ee-EEEEE-dee-yot
yaaaAAAYYYyy-deee-at

you're an eeeeeeeH-DEE-yut babe

I'd like that song better if he weren't idiot enough to make it go on so long.

rong it should never end

something about the line "every time you move your teeth" is so terrifying to me--such a savage way to describe talking

the 10min version of idiot wind on hard rain isn't as good as the bott version because it's more of a vicious cartoon and more like what the people itt who don't like the song hear in it, but it does have an incredible sarcastic intonation of AND IT MAKES ME FEEL SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SORRY which would prob be the definitive interpretation if it didn't flatten out all the emotional space. like, i prefer it when he is actually sorry. but sometimes.

you guys are a lot nicer than I and maybe I am a psychopath is what this thread is teaching me. I love mean Dylan

at the height of my mixtape days I never put any Dylan on the love song ones. He shows more solicitude, patience, and look-you-in-the-eye honesty when he's hating a woman.

I really like his singing on 'Nashville Skyline'.

i think the sarcasm and meanness is present in the bott version too; it's just that amping them up crowds out what else is there. fun as it is. sara's supposed to be sitting in the front row at that concert too!

along the lines of breaking up on the docks that night: is the one-eyed undertaker blowing a futile horn or a feudal one, and does it make any difference

it's more of a vicious cartoon

this IS the best kind of cartoon tho

i can't really think of a not-mean dylan love song that really works for me -- maybe 'all i really wanna do,' but that one seems more like a joke than anything. come to think of it, he doesn't really have many not-mean love songs. maybe 'i want you,' but i suspect there's some hate buried somewhere in those garbled images.

'Lay lady lay' doesn't work for you?

i can't really think of a not-mean dylan love song that really works for me -- maybe 'all i really wanna do,' but that one seems more like a joke than anything. come to think of it, he doesn't really have many not-mean love songs. maybe 'i want you,' but i suspect there's some hate buried somewhere in those garbled images.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, April 18, 2013 4:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can't either, but that's why I don't like Dylan more than I otherwise would, he just seems so mired in resentment throughout his career and it gets tiresome.

"Don't Think Twice It's Alright" is a great, beautiful, bitter breakup song that somehow lacks the cruelty of idiot wind, even though some of its lines are pretty mean -- they just sound more in line with the expected anger of the fed-up lover, whereas there's something much more terrible and terrifying in idiot wind (which, tbf, I guess is the difference between the breakup of a relatively short relationship between two young people and the breakup of a tumultuous marriage).

i prefer the sandie shaw version of 'lay lady lay.' i think dylan's voice is what makes it hard for me to take any of his love songs straight -- he can't avoid injecting some sarcasm or (fake?) smarm into his delivery.

if you're going to Dylan for love songs, you're going to Dylan for the wrong reasons

"i'll be your baby tonight", "tonight i'll be staying here with you", "if not for you", "the man in me", "wedding song", "nobody cept you", "lonesome when you go" is a love song cuz she hasn't gone yet, i mean there are lots

"love minus zero/no limit" i mean is maybe some bullshit fascist poet-boy statement of ideals rather than a love song to an actual human sure but you can still use it as one if you want

"nobody cept you"

this is the first genuinely great love song of his that sprang to mind

"man in me" way up there too

o yeah if not for you, classic

that is the really weird thing to me about New Morning, it seems like one of the only Dylan albums where he's in an almost uniformly positive state of mind

dlh, otm

New Morning is one of my favorite Dylan albums

graduating in july just before my birthday and totally listening to "day of the locusts" on repeat for 24 hours

'i'll be your baby tonight' is a great one, nashville skyline is prob the least mean dylan album there is.

that's on JWH! at the end, where it suddenly turns into nashville skyline. yr comma might have denoted two totally separate thoughts tho.

oops! first heard those two albums on a continuous mixtape someone made for me as a teen and still sort of think of them as being somehow the same.

what i do have trouble thinking of tho, i realized looking at that list, is love songs pre-accident.

xp haha well yes that would be very confusing.

Dylan doesn't have any non-mean love songs?

A long time ago, I looked through most of his discography to make a compilation of my favourite Dylan love songs--not necessarily "lovey dovey" love songs, but Dylan-type love songs.

The non-mean love (lost) song that comes to mind is "Most of the Time". As do "Tomorrow Is a Long Time", "Mama, You Been on My Mind", "I Believe in You" (though I can see how this one is even more up to interpretation, but still). One that didn't make my playlist, but as others mention, is "If Not For You".

I can see how many songs are up to interpretation, but I've always thought only few songs about love were really mean, considering his vast discography and other songs.

He does have quite a few cynical/sarcastic songs, for sure, though.

i guess "from a buick 6" is a love song. those early ones tho--no limit, she belongs to me, etc--he's usually just bragging about the object. i got a girl who, etc.. not a lot of actual communication--vows, gooey compliments--until after the accident. jd is right that "all i wanna do" is special i think cuz it's an exception.

maybe all i mean here is third vs second person and maybe i am ascribing too much effect to it

at least he trusts women some of the time. I mean, "She said even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt." She would know.

ruby just smiled and said, oh you know some babies never learn

that swap meets line tho is kinda deceptive cuz it is prob the best line of his whole career

how bout "She’s everything I need and love but I can’t be swayed by that" from "Up to Me"?

With regard to special and exceptions, what about "Sara"? Despite the nymph and Scorpio sphinx comment (again interpretation), I think it's a nice love song.

I can see how his real life kind of puts a strain on the songs themselves, because everyone sees Dylan vs. Baez.