Round Three: “She knows there's no success like failure/ And that failure's no success at all”
For this I am going to use the help of Michael Gray and various other critics. Here's how this works, for each song I will consult various different sources (4 to start with) in the search for illuminating comments; on the strength of such a comment a song will be awarded bonus points. This might sound a little odd but what we are actually doing here is broadening our understanding of these songs and if nobody has anything of note to say about a particular song it must be deemed less important than one which has not only garnered a wealth of critical comment but also inspired somebody to see all sorts of things within it.
Here are the principal sources I will consult for this:
Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan (Continuum, 2000)
Christopher Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin (Penguin, 2003)
Neil Corcoran (ed.), 'Do you, Mr. Jones': Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors (Pimlico, 2003)
Howard Sounes, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (Black Swan, 2001)
Here's how this works: each source will be consulted for each song. Any poignant comments shall be noted, any derogatory comments shall be noted. For every derogatory comment the song receives -1. For each illuminating comment a song will receive 2, for a comment that is less than illuminating only 1 point will be given. In the event that a source does not discuss the song at any length it will receive 0. However if the source in question is Christopher Ricks' awful study then the “Christopher Ricks Stupidometer” comes into play – if Ricks has been stupid by overlooking a song, or by unfairly dismissing it, 1 compensation point will be awarded to counter-balance his stupidity and the damage it may cause.
The highest scoring song wins.
I get the final decision on the placement of tied songs, after all “It's Alright Ma” is out so I deserve my say somewhere.
Love Minus Zero/ No Limit
Gray, p. 59: Very much like Blake's “The Sick Rose” the brevity of “Love Minus Zero” belies its importance. It is light, delicate, poised; yet it handles intensely felt emotional experience, experience distilled by thought, so that what we are offered has neither an obtrusive atmosphere of intense feeling – none as Leavis said of Blake, “of the Shelleyan 'I feel, I suffer, I yearn' – not an obtrusive suggestion of how much intellect has gone into its making. (Points: 2)
Ricks, p. 300: The end of the song should be felt as something of surprise, to put it mildly. The beautiful equanimity of Dylan's voicing and of the tune itself should not disguise this from us, although clearly to speak of disguise may do the enterprise less justice: not, perhaps, an attempt to evoke the contrariety, but to bring home evasiveness or a self-deception that threatens all such laudatory lovings. The song seems to me to turn out to be saying some along these lines: 'What I like about her is that she is so wonderfully independent of me, she doesn't really need me, other people do this, that and the other, and she deliciously doesn't, she, she, she – actually come to think of it, far from being what I like about her, it's why – exit, muttering darkly something about going to get a hammer, and maybe breaking more than her wing, her spirit'… She had been valued for not needing to need him, yet now there is felt a need to be needed by her, a need and that she not be so strong. (2)
Christopher Butler, “Dylan and the Academics”, in Neil Corcoran (pp. 51-70), p. 52: It is less easy to agree that (as Gray suggests) an economy of language, a concentration and a tone of disinterestedness about deep emotion can make Dylan's “Love Minus Zero” comparable to Blake's “Oh rose thou art sick”, because the thematic links here are weak” (0) – note here that this is not -1 because it is Gray rather than Dylan who is being attacked. Butler's point is merely that “The Sick Rose” and “Love Minus Zero” bare absolutely no relation to each other in terms of what they are about, I'll let you make your own mind up.
Sounes, p. 205: “Love Minus Zero” features the wonderful “she's true like ice, like fire”. Although in writing this may sound like a cliché, it sounded quite beautiful when sung. Indeed it is a feature of Bob's work that, by his vocal phrasing, he can lift a seemingly simple couplet to the heights of lyricism. (2)
Total: 6
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Gray, p. 49: This sense of elemental tension comes up again and again in Dylan's work… in “It's All Over Now, Baby Blue” there comes the expressive “crying like a fire in the sun”. (1)
Ricks, p. 255: “His blankets, your door. He'd probably take that too, if he could, when taking his leave” (1)
Pamela Thurschwell, “A Different Baby Blue”, in Corcoran (pp.253-74), p. 260-1: “Baby Blue”… presses for a new beginning: “strike another match, go start anew”. If Dylan vehemently denies his ability to save or prophesy in “It Ain't Me Babe”, then by the time of “Baby Blue” he's occupying a version of that prophetic position again. He surveys the apocalyptic landscape and tells Baby Blue what she needs to do now” (2)
Not mentioned in Sounes (0)
Total: 4
Like a Rolling Stone
Gray, p. 139: The brevity and crispness of the language – city language, straight from the streets – combines with the pile up effect of all those internal rhymes, fired past the listener as from a repeater rifle, establishing at once the tone of bitter recrimination. The tone is modified as the language changes, as it accommodates a broader theme, a heightened appreciation on the narrator's part of Miss. Lonely's fall to 'homelessness'. (2)
Ricks, p. 181: Yet this relentless pressure (the drill of “How does it feel”), though it will not give up, is not without misgivings. They are what saves the song. Save it from being – in all its vituperative exhilaration – even more damnably proud than the person whom it damns and blasts. (2)
Thurschwell, in Corcoran, p. 267: The object of “Positively 4th Street's” rage is most likely male, but even 'Miss. Lonely' of “Like a Rolling Stone” is a moving target, sliding from contempt drenched object to exemplary subject. (2)
Sounes, p. 217: The target was clearly female and several people, including Joan Baez, have been suggested as the specific inspiration. It is more likely that the song was aimed generally at those he perceived as being 'phony'. The song's abiding success is due in no small part to the empathetic feelings of revenge it inspires. (2)
Total: 8
Visions of Johanna
Gray, p. 154: The mixture of 'serious' and 'flippant' language; the mixture of delicacy and coarseness; the mixture of abstract and neo-philosophy and figurative phraseology; the ambiguity that begins with the song's very title – because Johanna is not just a woman's name but Hebrew for Armageddon; the humour; the intensive build up of the song's scope: all this is pressed into the service of a work of art at once indefinable and precise. (2)
Ricks, p. 487: In “Visions of Johanna”, Dylan can turn the acquiescent helplessness and uselessness of “and all” into the far-from-helpless or-useless energies of aggression and baffled anger. (1)
Thurschwell, in Corcoran, p. 268: In the late-night-end-of-the-party/ end-of-the-world atmosphere of “Visions of Johanna” quiet is the shared attribute of the isolated community – the 'we' who are together but simultaneously “stranded” and alone. (2)
Sounes, p. 477: Britain's Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, considered Bob, “One of the great artists of the century” and said “'Visions of Johanna' was the best song lyric ever written'. (2)
Total: 7
All Along the Watchtower
Gray, p. 159: The general nature of the language in a song like this is impressionism revisited, no longer reflecting the summer tension in the city, as did Blonde on Blonde, but reflecting wintertime in the psyche instead. (2)
Ricks, p. 359: There is the scorpion song that stings itself to death, rounding fierily on itself, as “All Along the Watchtower”. “Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl”: at which conclusion, it is as if the song bizarrely begins at last, and as if the myth began again. (2)
Nicholas Roe, “Playing Time”, in Corcoran (pp.81-104), p. 94-5: The elements of this scene are simple, yet enigmatically so – “women, came and went”, “outside in the distance”, “two riders were approaching” – and they gather an ominous power by echoing the Revelation of St. John in which appear the watcher, the princes, the horsemen, and Christ as thief. The effect of this is to make Dylan's songs [on John Wesley Harding] attentive to eternity, from within the world of time, aware of and dealing with the arbitrary spirit that governs the universe. (2)
Not mentioned in Sounes (0)
Total: 6
Blind Willie McTell
Gray, p. 541: “What a song!”, p. 542: It is strength of the song that most of its images evoke more than one era: more than one time and place, while pressing upon us, time and again, a running analogy between Old Testament and New World. (2)
Ricks, p. 73: What kind of answer can those two lines of this final verse, the enduring refrain, be to its first four lines? Only an answer at once partial and heartening; McTell's singing is one of the things that there is. And we arrive at this conclusion, at art's being a glory of man that does not wither, via the two lines about the singer of this song itself: “I'm gazing out the window/ Of the St. James hotel”. I admire and love the way in which this claims so little, even perhaps claims nothing, does no more than repeat one of those moments when, abstracted from evil, you gaze out of the window in contemplative regard that is not self-regard. (2)
Richard Brown, “Highway 61 and Other American States of Mind”, in Corcoran (pp. 193-220), p. 215: The representative American space mapped out in the lyric requires the poetic treatment of the melancholy blues idiom, because it is unredeemed and unredeemable space. (2)
Sounes, p. 412: The modesty of the lyrics – though “Blind Willie McTell” illustrated clearly that Bob himself was a mighty blues singer – added to the power of the song, completing a great tribute to the heritage of African-American music. (2)
Total: 8
Most of the Time
Gray, p.595: “Most of the Time” escapes the suspicion that anyone might have written it even though it can be regarded almost entirely as a songwriting exercise, a run for it own sake along an extremely well-worn path. (-1)
Ricks, p. 353: Dylan has said that “songs need structure, stratagems, codes and stability”. This particular song is about the understandable human need to have stratagems and codes with which to outwit or outmanoeuvre – or if need be, outfrown – the losses and the losings. And if we find (as this song understands) that such a human need may on occasion have to make do either with an honesty that perseveres for sure but does fall short of perfection, or with a courage that cannot always be as entire as we would wish, we might try compassion. (2)
Not mentioned in Corcoran (0)
Sounes, p. 449: “Most of the Time”, one of the best songs on the album, is about relationships but was so subtle the term 'love song' did not do it justice. (1)
Total: 2
Not Dark Yet
Gray, p. 805: Whether the line [“it's not dark yet, but it's getting there”] announces an omnipresent consciousness of the comparative imminence of actual death or a consciousness that everything once worth savouring in life is losing its meaning, one of the things on offer here… is the sojourn of defeat. (1)
Ricks, p. 370: There's much more than time – its subject and its element – permits of. Oh, its being a song that starts with “Shadows are falling and I've been here all day” and then its having twenty-four lines, one for each hour of all day. (2)
Neil Corcoran, “Death's Honesty”, in Corcoran (pp.143-74), p. 172: Even if it's not dark yet, the song is very dark indeed, and has certainly made an end with something vital. If human relationship has faded, so too, it appears, has a relationship with the divine. (2)
Sounes, p. 481: “Not Dark Yet” sounded like the interior monologue of a man about to die. (1)
Total: 6
Things Have Changed
Due to the release date of Gray's study he doesn't cover it, full compensation should be awarded as Gray would clearly love it. (2)
Ricks only mentions this song in footnotes. The Christopher Ricks-stupid-o-meter comes into play. (1)
Aiden Day, “Looking for Nothing: Dylan Now”, in Corcoran (pp.257-95) p. 284: The extent to which the women is threatening defines the barrenness of the relationship that is being described. A part of him may be after hr white skin, but she is after something too – a kind of kill, seducing this man of power, authority, position. So it's not straight forward, who is hooking whom. They are both extracting something from it. (2)
Sounes also couldn't possibly have covered it in 2000 but he would love the fact it won an Oscar. (1)
Total: 6
Mississippi
Gray could have covered it as he wrote it in 1997, he doesn't. (0)
Ricks mentions “Mississippi” (p. 307) in relation to “Sugar Baby”, a song he appears to love more than his own wife. (0)
Although “Mississippi” is mentioned half a dozen or so times, nothing of any note is said in Corcoran. (0)
Sounes also disregards the Sheryl crow cover which he must have known about. (0)
Total: 0
Ok so the final results are in, here goes, in descending order with final comments:
10. Mississippi – poor showing in the last round. Bob-heads seem to dismiss it because of the Sheryl Crow cover and time of recording, the critics only use it as a convenient reference point. Tenth place isn't bad though.
9. Most of the Time – Ricks loves it and I like his point about the tight structure reflecting the inner need for stability. The other critics don't seem to like it at all however, and Gray seems to think it a fairly average song, he's wrong.
8. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue – a song more referenced than discussed for some reason. Eighth place is about fair I think.
7. Things Have Changed – disappointing lack of criticism, I searched the net and Gray has not let his thoughts be known for some reason. I would have wanted it higher but there we go.
6. All Along the Watchtower – I love the idea of it being caught in a sort of nightmarish continuum whereby it just keeps on starting again. The end is a loop back to the beginning.
5. Not Dark Yet – Not much insight from the critics on this one, as good a song as Bob ever wrote in my eyes.
4. Love Minus Zero – fast becoming my favourite song. I don't think the critics know what to make of it.
3. Visions of Johanna – Unsurprising high finish for this. It had maybe the most criticism to choose from, pages and pages of it. I never knew that Johanna meant “Armageddon” till now.
2. Like a Rolling Stone – It came through a rigorous and quasi-objective system and still almost came out on top, nothing else needs to be said.
1. Blind Willie McTell – Gray's reading of this song is worth the price of the book alone. Dylan's finest song, definitively, and to think – he left it off Infidels.
Now let me see your list….
For this I am going to use the help of Michael Gray and various other critics. Here's how this works, for each song I will consult various different sources (4 to start with) in the search for illuminating comments; on the strength of such a comment a song will be awarded bonus points. This might sound a little odd but what we are actually doing here is broadening our understanding of these songs and if nobody has anything of note to say about a particular song it must be deemed less important than one which has not only garnered a wealth of critical comment but also inspired somebody to see all sorts of things within it.
Here are the principal sources I will consult for this:
Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan (Continuum, 2000)
Christopher Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin (Penguin, 2003)
Neil Corcoran (ed.), 'Do you, Mr. Jones': Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors (Pimlico, 2003)
Howard Sounes, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (Black Swan, 2001)
Here's how this works: each source will be consulted for each song. Any poignant comments shall be noted, any derogatory comments shall be noted. For every derogatory comment the song receives -1. For each illuminating comment a song will receive 2, for a comment that is less than illuminating only 1 point will be given. In the event that a source does not discuss the song at any length it will receive 0. However if the source in question is Christopher Ricks' awful study then the “Christopher Ricks Stupidometer” comes into play – if Ricks has been stupid by overlooking a song, or by unfairly dismissing it, 1 compensation point will be awarded to counter-balance his stupidity and the damage it may cause.
The highest scoring song wins.
I get the final decision on the placement of tied songs, after all “It's Alright Ma” is out so I deserve my say somewhere.
Love Minus Zero/ No Limit
Gray, p. 59: Very much like Blake's “The Sick Rose” the brevity of “Love Minus Zero” belies its importance. It is light, delicate, poised; yet it handles intensely felt emotional experience, experience distilled by thought, so that what we are offered has neither an obtrusive atmosphere of intense feeling – none as Leavis said of Blake, “of the Shelleyan 'I feel, I suffer, I yearn' – not an obtrusive suggestion of how much intellect has gone into its making. (Points: 2)
Ricks, p. 300: The end of the song should be felt as something of surprise, to put it mildly. The beautiful equanimity of Dylan's voicing and of the tune itself should not disguise this from us, although clearly to speak of disguise may do the enterprise less justice: not, perhaps, an attempt to evoke the contrariety, but to bring home evasiveness or a self-deception that threatens all such laudatory lovings. The song seems to me to turn out to be saying some along these lines: 'What I like about her is that she is so wonderfully independent of me, she doesn't really need me, other people do this, that and the other, and she deliciously doesn't, she, she, she – actually come to think of it, far from being what I like about her, it's why – exit, muttering darkly something about going to get a hammer, and maybe breaking more than her wing, her spirit'… She had been valued for not needing to need him, yet now there is felt a need to be needed by her, a need and that she not be so strong. (2)
Christopher Butler, “Dylan and the Academics”, in Neil Corcoran (pp. 51-70), p. 52: It is less easy to agree that (as Gray suggests) an economy of language, a concentration and a tone of disinterestedness about deep emotion can make Dylan's “Love Minus Zero” comparable to Blake's “Oh rose thou art sick”, because the thematic links here are weak” (0) – note here that this is not -1 because it is Gray rather than Dylan who is being attacked. Butler's point is merely that “The Sick Rose” and “Love Minus Zero” bare absolutely no relation to each other in terms of what they are about, I'll let you make your own mind up.
Sounes, p. 205: “Love Minus Zero” features the wonderful “she's true like ice, like fire”. Although in writing this may sound like a cliché, it sounded quite beautiful when sung. Indeed it is a feature of Bob's work that, by his vocal phrasing, he can lift a seemingly simple couplet to the heights of lyricism. (2)
Total: 6
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Gray, p. 49: This sense of elemental tension comes up again and again in Dylan's work… in “It's All Over Now, Baby Blue” there comes the expressive “crying like a fire in the sun”. (1)
Ricks, p. 255: “His blankets, your door. He'd probably take that too, if he could, when taking his leave” (1)
Pamela Thurschwell, “A Different Baby Blue”, in Corcoran (pp.253-74), p. 260-1: “Baby Blue”… presses for a new beginning: “strike another match, go start anew”. If Dylan vehemently denies his ability to save or prophesy in “It Ain't Me Babe”, then by the time of “Baby Blue” he's occupying a version of that prophetic position again. He surveys the apocalyptic landscape and tells Baby Blue what she needs to do now” (2)
Not mentioned in Sounes (0)
Total: 4
Like a Rolling Stone
Gray, p. 139: The brevity and crispness of the language – city language, straight from the streets – combines with the pile up effect of all those internal rhymes, fired past the listener as from a repeater rifle, establishing at once the tone of bitter recrimination. The tone is modified as the language changes, as it accommodates a broader theme, a heightened appreciation on the narrator's part of Miss. Lonely's fall to 'homelessness'. (2)
Ricks, p. 181: Yet this relentless pressure (the drill of “How does it feel”), though it will not give up, is not without misgivings. They are what saves the song. Save it from being – in all its vituperative exhilaration – even more damnably proud than the person whom it damns and blasts. (2)
Thurschwell, in Corcoran, p. 267: The object of “Positively 4th Street's” rage is most likely male, but even 'Miss. Lonely' of “Like a Rolling Stone” is a moving target, sliding from contempt drenched object to exemplary subject. (2)
Sounes, p. 217: The target was clearly female and several people, including Joan Baez, have been suggested as the specific inspiration. It is more likely that the song was aimed generally at those he perceived as being 'phony'. The song's abiding success is due in no small part to the empathetic feelings of revenge it inspires. (2)
Total: 8
Visions of Johanna
Gray, p. 154: The mixture of 'serious' and 'flippant' language; the mixture of delicacy and coarseness; the mixture of abstract and neo-philosophy and figurative phraseology; the ambiguity that begins with the song's very title – because Johanna is not just a woman's name but Hebrew for Armageddon; the humour; the intensive build up of the song's scope: all this is pressed into the service of a work of art at once indefinable and precise. (2)
Ricks, p. 487: In “Visions of Johanna”, Dylan can turn the acquiescent helplessness and uselessness of “and all” into the far-from-helpless or-useless energies of aggression and baffled anger. (1)
Thurschwell, in Corcoran, p. 268: In the late-night-end-of-the-party/ end-of-the-world atmosphere of “Visions of Johanna” quiet is the shared attribute of the isolated community – the 'we' who are together but simultaneously “stranded” and alone. (2)
Sounes, p. 477: Britain's Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, considered Bob, “One of the great artists of the century” and said “'Visions of Johanna' was the best song lyric ever written'. (2)
Total: 7
All Along the Watchtower
Gray, p. 159: The general nature of the language in a song like this is impressionism revisited, no longer reflecting the summer tension in the city, as did Blonde on Blonde, but reflecting wintertime in the psyche instead. (2)
Ricks, p. 359: There is the scorpion song that stings itself to death, rounding fierily on itself, as “All Along the Watchtower”. “Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl”: at which conclusion, it is as if the song bizarrely begins at last, and as if the myth began again. (2)
Nicholas Roe, “Playing Time”, in Corcoran (pp.81-104), p. 94-5: The elements of this scene are simple, yet enigmatically so – “women, came and went”, “outside in the distance”, “two riders were approaching” – and they gather an ominous power by echoing the Revelation of St. John in which appear the watcher, the princes, the horsemen, and Christ as thief. The effect of this is to make Dylan's songs [on John Wesley Harding] attentive to eternity, from within the world of time, aware of and dealing with the arbitrary spirit that governs the universe. (2)
Not mentioned in Sounes (0)
Total: 6
Blind Willie McTell
Gray, p. 541: “What a song!”, p. 542: It is strength of the song that most of its images evoke more than one era: more than one time and place, while pressing upon us, time and again, a running analogy between Old Testament and New World. (2)
Ricks, p. 73: What kind of answer can those two lines of this final verse, the enduring refrain, be to its first four lines? Only an answer at once partial and heartening; McTell's singing is one of the things that there is. And we arrive at this conclusion, at art's being a glory of man that does not wither, via the two lines about the singer of this song itself: “I'm gazing out the window/ Of the St. James hotel”. I admire and love the way in which this claims so little, even perhaps claims nothing, does no more than repeat one of those moments when, abstracted from evil, you gaze out of the window in contemplative regard that is not self-regard. (2)
Richard Brown, “Highway 61 and Other American States of Mind”, in Corcoran (pp. 193-220), p. 215: The representative American space mapped out in the lyric requires the poetic treatment of the melancholy blues idiom, because it is unredeemed and unredeemable space. (2)
Sounes, p. 412: The modesty of the lyrics – though “Blind Willie McTell” illustrated clearly that Bob himself was a mighty blues singer – added to the power of the song, completing a great tribute to the heritage of African-American music. (2)
Total: 8
Most of the Time
Gray, p.595: “Most of the Time” escapes the suspicion that anyone might have written it even though it can be regarded almost entirely as a songwriting exercise, a run for it own sake along an extremely well-worn path. (-1)
Ricks, p. 353: Dylan has said that “songs need structure, stratagems, codes and stability”. This particular song is about the understandable human need to have stratagems and codes with which to outwit or outmanoeuvre – or if need be, outfrown – the losses and the losings. And if we find (as this song understands) that such a human need may on occasion have to make do either with an honesty that perseveres for sure but does fall short of perfection, or with a courage that cannot always be as entire as we would wish, we might try compassion. (2)
Not mentioned in Corcoran (0)
Sounes, p. 449: “Most of the Time”, one of the best songs on the album, is about relationships but was so subtle the term 'love song' did not do it justice. (1)
Total: 2
Not Dark Yet
Gray, p. 805: Whether the line [“it's not dark yet, but it's getting there”] announces an omnipresent consciousness of the comparative imminence of actual death or a consciousness that everything once worth savouring in life is losing its meaning, one of the things on offer here… is the sojourn of defeat. (1)
Ricks, p. 370: There's much more than time – its subject and its element – permits of. Oh, its being a song that starts with “Shadows are falling and I've been here all day” and then its having twenty-four lines, one for each hour of all day. (2)
Neil Corcoran, “Death's Honesty”, in Corcoran (pp.143-74), p. 172: Even if it's not dark yet, the song is very dark indeed, and has certainly made an end with something vital. If human relationship has faded, so too, it appears, has a relationship with the divine. (2)
Sounes, p. 481: “Not Dark Yet” sounded like the interior monologue of a man about to die. (1)
Total: 6
Things Have Changed
Due to the release date of Gray's study he doesn't cover it, full compensation should be awarded as Gray would clearly love it. (2)
Ricks only mentions this song in footnotes. The Christopher Ricks-stupid-o-meter comes into play. (1)
Aiden Day, “Looking for Nothing: Dylan Now”, in Corcoran (pp.257-95) p. 284: The extent to which the women is threatening defines the barrenness of the relationship that is being described. A part of him may be after hr white skin, but she is after something too – a kind of kill, seducing this man of power, authority, position. So it's not straight forward, who is hooking whom. They are both extracting something from it. (2)
Sounes also couldn't possibly have covered it in 2000 but he would love the fact it won an Oscar. (1)
Total: 6
Mississippi
Gray could have covered it as he wrote it in 1997, he doesn't. (0)
Ricks mentions “Mississippi” (p. 307) in relation to “Sugar Baby”, a song he appears to love more than his own wife. (0)
Although “Mississippi” is mentioned half a dozen or so times, nothing of any note is said in Corcoran. (0)
Sounes also disregards the Sheryl crow cover which he must have known about. (0)
Total: 0
Ok so the final results are in, here goes, in descending order with final comments:
10. Mississippi – poor showing in the last round. Bob-heads seem to dismiss it because of the Sheryl Crow cover and time of recording, the critics only use it as a convenient reference point. Tenth place isn't bad though.
9. Most of the Time – Ricks loves it and I like his point about the tight structure reflecting the inner need for stability. The other critics don't seem to like it at all however, and Gray seems to think it a fairly average song, he's wrong.
8. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue – a song more referenced than discussed for some reason. Eighth place is about fair I think.
7. Things Have Changed – disappointing lack of criticism, I searched the net and Gray has not let his thoughts be known for some reason. I would have wanted it higher but there we go.
6. All Along the Watchtower – I love the idea of it being caught in a sort of nightmarish continuum whereby it just keeps on starting again. The end is a loop back to the beginning.
5. Not Dark Yet – Not much insight from the critics on this one, as good a song as Bob ever wrote in my eyes.
4. Love Minus Zero – fast becoming my favourite song. I don't think the critics know what to make of it.
3. Visions of Johanna – Unsurprising high finish for this. It had maybe the most criticism to choose from, pages and pages of it. I never knew that Johanna meant “Armageddon” till now.
2. Like a Rolling Stone – It came through a rigorous and quasi-objective system and still almost came out on top, nothing else needs to be said.
1. Blind Willie McTell – Gray's reading of this song is worth the price of the book alone. Dylan's finest song, definitively, and to think – he left it off Infidels.
Now let me see your list….