Round 2: “All my powers of expression, I thought so sublime”
After such an unconventional and slightly inadequate critical model – a model that demands perfection and privileges consistency over moments of inspiration, the perennially solid over the sporadically brilliant – what can we say? Well, a number of heavyweight contenders are out, including my personal favourite “It's Alright Ma” and the masterful “Hard Rain”. However, with this said the final list of twenty is certainly impressive and, in theory, between them contain not a single 'weak line'. What we are faced with now are some of the eternal questions that have preoccupied critics for millennia: 'How can we define what is “good” and what is “bad” and furthermore is it even a valid question to ask?'. You might have to wait until I've finished my PhD (provided I actually do one) for an answer to such questions but for the present I can say this: Criticism has always been, broadly speaking, successful when identifying the 'good' and the 'bad', when separating the canonical elite from the dross; but it has been far less eloquent (and far more quiet) when it comes to defining varying degrees of 'goodness'. This might be for a very good reason, who is to say, for example, that Hamlet is better than King Lear, or indeed that J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is a better novel than George Orwell's 1984? All are in agreement that these works are undisputed classics but few ask or make a case for which is 'better'. This is the situation I am faced with: I have committed myself to a two-footed tackle and must see it through to completion, even at the risk of a red card! I am faced with no fewer than twenty flawless songs and must decide on superior ten, I must say that 'these ten are better than these ten'. How can this be done in an objective way? How can one avoid subjectivity when making an evaluation? Is it possible and even if it is, do we want it? Once again I refer you to my yet-to-be written PhD thesis.
For the time being the only thing I can think of is to privilege the inventive use of language over its more bland applications. One potential problem of this is that songs with complex imagery or of a surrealist bent will be preferred to less flashy but often more 'real' lyrics like those of say, the now disqualified, “Mama You Been on My Mind”. Dylan's later work especially achieves it effects through the skilful application of everyday speech and phrases. What I will thus seek to award is the most effective use of language rather than the most elaborate or elevated use of it, in this way simplicity and complexity are equally exonerated from the charge of the other. This brings us back to the central problem of subjectivity which, I'm afraid, seems increasingly difficult to avoid. It also gives root to a new problem namely the failure to account for the 'content' of the lyrics in an ethical, moral or political way. It is an old problem that Structuralists and Formalists have been criticized for, for years, but the failure to acknowledge and engage with meaning not only defies common sense but oftentimes does not do the original material either. In this instant though, where we are trying to construct a 'top ten', this is less of a problem because it is impossible (and not necessary) to say that the concerns of one song is more important or better than those of another. “Love Minus Zero” is a mixture of social comment and devotional lyricism but does that make it any 'better' than the more mundane and whimsical issues at stake in “Sign on the Window”, than the polemical vitriol of “Hollis Brown” or the sheer disillusionment of “Things Have Changed”? Perhaps not, a song like “Joey” might invite a political or ethical debate but that debate is not necessarily an important one or one worth having – “Joey” is an awful song. A song like “Lay Lady Lay” invites you to say little beyond the appreciation of delicate simplicity but that fact makes it no less valuable than “Hurricane”. Hence, what the songs are actually about is not at stake here, the precise application of language that some like to call poetry.
1. Song: The Ballad of Hollis Brown
This song's impetus comes mainly from the incessant guitar and the driving rhythm of the blues lyric structure; as a result not every word is integral to its meaning. In a song like “All Along the Watchtower” every word signifies in a tight economy, in a song like “Isis” every word contributes to the narrative syntagm, in a song like this one the words are secondary to both the form and the music.
Final Verdict: OUT
2. Song: Love Minus Zero
This song however would function perfectly well as a poem on the page, such is its perfection: it's true like ice like fire, what more can I say?
Final Verdict: IN
3. Song: Gates of Eden
Let's be honest, it's done well to get this far. However a couple of the images in this song do sometimes strike one as odd rather than surreal – depends on what mood I'm in generally but the lamp-post one tends to stick out the most. Also if you strip the song of Dylan's prophet-like vocals and just read it, it loses a lot, far more than “Love Minus Zero” say.
Final Verdict: OUT
4. Song: It's All Over Now (Baby Blue)
If only for the look on Donovan's face when he plays it in Don't Look Back it has to stay. The images in this song are wonderful. “Crying like a fire in the sun”, “the empty handed painter from your streets”, “the sky too is folding under you”… you don't need a degree in English to know that such things are special.
Final Verdict: IN
5. Song: Like a Rolling Stone
It's Rolling Stone, what to do, what to do…. What I'm thinking is this: 'Is this song's real power chiefly in its lyrics or does the biting delivery and snarl of Dylan's voice lend it more vitriol than it perhaps has?' I'm thinking: 'If I include Rolling Stone would I be doing it because I genuinely thought it was lyrically worthy or because of its enormous reputation?' Ok.
Final Verdict: IN
6. Song: Visions of Johanna
There are no questions here at all however.
Final Verdict: IN
7. Song: All Along the Watchtower
Ditto
Final Verdict: IN
8. Song: I Shall Be Released
This song is the perfect synthesis of instrument and voice, but its lyrics we're looking for and it just lacks too much punch. Compare with “It's Alright Ma”, a song not even in the top twenty-eight! Enough said I think.
Final Verdict: OUT
9. Song: Idiot Wind
Whilst it is a wonderful song and in my humble opinion singularly better than anything Bob's supposed second, Leonard Cohen, has ever written. It just doesn't make it. A close call between this and another song but that one got the nod, if anything “Idiot Wind” could do with being maybe 30 seconds or so shorter.
Final Verdict: OUT
10. Song: Shelter from the Storm
Bob is using an old Ballad form here and uses the same rhyme repeatedly to wonderful effect. However after casting out “Idiot Wind” its inclusion here would be difficult to justify.
Final Verdict: OUT
11. Song: Isis
It's been said many times by critics that “Isis” is a long journey into nowhere, that looking for meaning here is like looking into the abyss. I think they're looking too hard as “Isis” is clearly just “a song about marriage…for Leonard if he's still here”. Still I'd say “Isis” was at least 70% about music and vocals, the tumbling AB rhyme scheme hitting the tumultuous clash of violin and harp.
Final Verdict: OUT
12. Song: Changing of the Guards
As poetic and visionary as it is, it can also appear oblique and rather vague at times too. Best allegorical song by Bob by a mile but I think BD's poetic talents lay outside symbolism.
Final Verdict: OUT
13. Song: Where Are You Tonight?
The concerns over that “full blooded Cherokee”, who “predicted it to me” with “the juice running down my leg” must now come into focus. Also note the “boss/ Who'd never known about loss” or that his “money was green”. Whilst not bad lines (JAMES!!) they are unworthy of a spot in top ten land.
Final Verdict: OUT
14. Song: Blind Willie McTell
As well as Dylan's brilliant performance and the magnificent piano this track also boasts some of the tightest economic writing from Dylan since John Wesley Harding. Every line means so much more than one line should, it's a shoo in.
Final Verdict: IN
15. Song: Jokerman
I'm afraid the chorus lets things down here. Again I'd argue it's as good as anything someone like Lou Reed will ever write but we're asking for so much more.
Final Verdict: OUT
16. Song: Most of the Time
What makes this song so special is how cleverly Bob uses his refrain here, it takes on a different meaning each and every time he sings it. Not only that the lyrics themselves are very real and Bob once again manages to be touching without being sentimental or cheesy.
Final Verdict: IN
17. Song: Not Dark Yet
This is a masterpiece and only a hurricane which will blow my house down and blow my computer up as I'm typing this could stop me putting it through.
Final Verdict: IN
18. Song: Cold Irons Bound
The amazing thing about the lyrics here is that they still manage to be so good in such a manic structure. Not quite good enough I'm afraid.
Final Verdict: OUT
19. Song: Things Have Changed
I still can't decide which I like more: this or “Not Dark Yet”
Final Verdict: IN
20. Song: Mississippi
Best song on “Love and Theft” by a mile, it in and at the expense of “Idiot Wind” too.
Final Verdict: IN
So there you go: ten out, ten still in. Say goodbye to the ten rejects and remember that Cohen's top ten wouldn't come close to them.
In Round 3 we will be trying to put an order to the elite ten.
Just to recap these ten are:
Love Minus Zero/ No Limit
It's All Over Now (Baby Blue)
Like a Rolling Stone
Visions of Johanna
All Along the Watchtower
Blind Willie McTell
Most of the Time
Not Dark Yet
Things Have Changed
Mississippi
Forward to Bonus Round
After such an unconventional and slightly inadequate critical model – a model that demands perfection and privileges consistency over moments of inspiration, the perennially solid over the sporadically brilliant – what can we say? Well, a number of heavyweight contenders are out, including my personal favourite “It's Alright Ma” and the masterful “Hard Rain”. However, with this said the final list of twenty is certainly impressive and, in theory, between them contain not a single 'weak line'. What we are faced with now are some of the eternal questions that have preoccupied critics for millennia: 'How can we define what is “good” and what is “bad” and furthermore is it even a valid question to ask?'. You might have to wait until I've finished my PhD (provided I actually do one) for an answer to such questions but for the present I can say this: Criticism has always been, broadly speaking, successful when identifying the 'good' and the 'bad', when separating the canonical elite from the dross; but it has been far less eloquent (and far more quiet) when it comes to defining varying degrees of 'goodness'. This might be for a very good reason, who is to say, for example, that Hamlet is better than King Lear, or indeed that J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is a better novel than George Orwell's 1984? All are in agreement that these works are undisputed classics but few ask or make a case for which is 'better'. This is the situation I am faced with: I have committed myself to a two-footed tackle and must see it through to completion, even at the risk of a red card! I am faced with no fewer than twenty flawless songs and must decide on superior ten, I must say that 'these ten are better than these ten'. How can this be done in an objective way? How can one avoid subjectivity when making an evaluation? Is it possible and even if it is, do we want it? Once again I refer you to my yet-to-be written PhD thesis.
For the time being the only thing I can think of is to privilege the inventive use of language over its more bland applications. One potential problem of this is that songs with complex imagery or of a surrealist bent will be preferred to less flashy but often more 'real' lyrics like those of say, the now disqualified, “Mama You Been on My Mind”. Dylan's later work especially achieves it effects through the skilful application of everyday speech and phrases. What I will thus seek to award is the most effective use of language rather than the most elaborate or elevated use of it, in this way simplicity and complexity are equally exonerated from the charge of the other. This brings us back to the central problem of subjectivity which, I'm afraid, seems increasingly difficult to avoid. It also gives root to a new problem namely the failure to account for the 'content' of the lyrics in an ethical, moral or political way. It is an old problem that Structuralists and Formalists have been criticized for, for years, but the failure to acknowledge and engage with meaning not only defies common sense but oftentimes does not do the original material either. In this instant though, where we are trying to construct a 'top ten', this is less of a problem because it is impossible (and not necessary) to say that the concerns of one song is more important or better than those of another. “Love Minus Zero” is a mixture of social comment and devotional lyricism but does that make it any 'better' than the more mundane and whimsical issues at stake in “Sign on the Window”, than the polemical vitriol of “Hollis Brown” or the sheer disillusionment of “Things Have Changed”? Perhaps not, a song like “Joey” might invite a political or ethical debate but that debate is not necessarily an important one or one worth having – “Joey” is an awful song. A song like “Lay Lady Lay” invites you to say little beyond the appreciation of delicate simplicity but that fact makes it no less valuable than “Hurricane”. Hence, what the songs are actually about is not at stake here, the precise application of language that some like to call poetry.
1. Song: The Ballad of Hollis Brown
This song's impetus comes mainly from the incessant guitar and the driving rhythm of the blues lyric structure; as a result not every word is integral to its meaning. In a song like “All Along the Watchtower” every word signifies in a tight economy, in a song like “Isis” every word contributes to the narrative syntagm, in a song like this one the words are secondary to both the form and the music.
Final Verdict: OUT
2. Song: Love Minus Zero
This song however would function perfectly well as a poem on the page, such is its perfection: it's true like ice like fire, what more can I say?
Final Verdict: IN
3. Song: Gates of Eden
Let's be honest, it's done well to get this far. However a couple of the images in this song do sometimes strike one as odd rather than surreal – depends on what mood I'm in generally but the lamp-post one tends to stick out the most. Also if you strip the song of Dylan's prophet-like vocals and just read it, it loses a lot, far more than “Love Minus Zero” say.
Final Verdict: OUT
4. Song: It's All Over Now (Baby Blue)
If only for the look on Donovan's face when he plays it in Don't Look Back it has to stay. The images in this song are wonderful. “Crying like a fire in the sun”, “the empty handed painter from your streets”, “the sky too is folding under you”… you don't need a degree in English to know that such things are special.
Final Verdict: IN
5. Song: Like a Rolling Stone
It's Rolling Stone, what to do, what to do…. What I'm thinking is this: 'Is this song's real power chiefly in its lyrics or does the biting delivery and snarl of Dylan's voice lend it more vitriol than it perhaps has?' I'm thinking: 'If I include Rolling Stone would I be doing it because I genuinely thought it was lyrically worthy or because of its enormous reputation?' Ok.
Final Verdict: IN
6. Song: Visions of Johanna
There are no questions here at all however.
Final Verdict: IN
7. Song: All Along the Watchtower
Ditto
Final Verdict: IN
8. Song: I Shall Be Released
This song is the perfect synthesis of instrument and voice, but its lyrics we're looking for and it just lacks too much punch. Compare with “It's Alright Ma”, a song not even in the top twenty-eight! Enough said I think.
Final Verdict: OUT
9. Song: Idiot Wind
Whilst it is a wonderful song and in my humble opinion singularly better than anything Bob's supposed second, Leonard Cohen, has ever written. It just doesn't make it. A close call between this and another song but that one got the nod, if anything “Idiot Wind” could do with being maybe 30 seconds or so shorter.
Final Verdict: OUT
10. Song: Shelter from the Storm
Bob is using an old Ballad form here and uses the same rhyme repeatedly to wonderful effect. However after casting out “Idiot Wind” its inclusion here would be difficult to justify.
Final Verdict: OUT
11. Song: Isis
It's been said many times by critics that “Isis” is a long journey into nowhere, that looking for meaning here is like looking into the abyss. I think they're looking too hard as “Isis” is clearly just “a song about marriage…for Leonard if he's still here”. Still I'd say “Isis” was at least 70% about music and vocals, the tumbling AB rhyme scheme hitting the tumultuous clash of violin and harp.
Final Verdict: OUT
12. Song: Changing of the Guards
As poetic and visionary as it is, it can also appear oblique and rather vague at times too. Best allegorical song by Bob by a mile but I think BD's poetic talents lay outside symbolism.
Final Verdict: OUT
13. Song: Where Are You Tonight?
The concerns over that “full blooded Cherokee”, who “predicted it to me” with “the juice running down my leg” must now come into focus. Also note the “boss/ Who'd never known about loss” or that his “money was green”. Whilst not bad lines (JAMES!!) they are unworthy of a spot in top ten land.
Final Verdict: OUT
14. Song: Blind Willie McTell
As well as Dylan's brilliant performance and the magnificent piano this track also boasts some of the tightest economic writing from Dylan since John Wesley Harding. Every line means so much more than one line should, it's a shoo in.
Final Verdict: IN
15. Song: Jokerman
I'm afraid the chorus lets things down here. Again I'd argue it's as good as anything someone like Lou Reed will ever write but we're asking for so much more.
Final Verdict: OUT
16. Song: Most of the Time
What makes this song so special is how cleverly Bob uses his refrain here, it takes on a different meaning each and every time he sings it. Not only that the lyrics themselves are very real and Bob once again manages to be touching without being sentimental or cheesy.
Final Verdict: IN
17. Song: Not Dark Yet
This is a masterpiece and only a hurricane which will blow my house down and blow my computer up as I'm typing this could stop me putting it through.
Final Verdict: IN
18. Song: Cold Irons Bound
The amazing thing about the lyrics here is that they still manage to be so good in such a manic structure. Not quite good enough I'm afraid.
Final Verdict: OUT
19. Song: Things Have Changed
I still can't decide which I like more: this or “Not Dark Yet”
Final Verdict: IN
20. Song: Mississippi
Best song on “Love and Theft” by a mile, it in and at the expense of “Idiot Wind” too.
Final Verdict: IN
So there you go: ten out, ten still in. Say goodbye to the ten rejects and remember that Cohen's top ten wouldn't come close to them.
In Round 3 we will be trying to put an order to the elite ten.
Just to recap these ten are:
Love Minus Zero/ No Limit
It's All Over Now (Baby Blue)
Like a Rolling Stone
Visions of Johanna
All Along the Watchtower
Blind Willie McTell
Most of the Time
Not Dark Yet
Things Have Changed
Mississippi
Forward to Bonus Round