411 Music Ten Deep 5.28.10: Top Ten Bob Dylan Songs

Posted by Andrew Moll on 05.28.2010

In honor of Bob Dylan's birthday, Ten Deep ranks his ten best songs! From "Like a Rolling Stone" to "Tangled Up in Blue" see what made the list in this week's edition of 411 Music Ten Deep!


(Disclaimer: All opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of 411 Music and its staff.)


Welcome, everybody, to another life-changing edition of 411 Music Ten Deep! Sounds like a bit much to you? Too bad! Alright, no, you're probably right, although I do think it's pretty good this week. At least in my incredibly biased opinion. That is all to come, though, as first we have to look at the comments, via the feedback to last week's column on the Top Ten Motown Songs:





not bad.

but.

notable misses:

I Want You Back
Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch
The Tears of a Clown
Do You Love Me
(Love Is Like A) Heatwave

and a hundred other Stevie songs

but I guess that's far too many for a top ten.
Posted By: Lucas Wesley (Guest) on May 21, 2010 at 01:45 PM

Unfortuantately yes, that is too many for a top ten. If you want to put any of those songs in, you have to take something out, and that wouldn't be easy.

I'm a professional background singer who has worked with many Motown artists over the years. Marvin Gaye is the the "MAN" who gave me my first break in the music business in 1983 when he hired me as a background singer for the "Midnight Love" Tour. During "Sexual Healing", me and the other background singers played a joke on Marvin and pulled down his pants. That photo was captured in Jet Magazine as the weeks best photo. Marvin kept the gag in the act. He gave the ladies what they wanted to see...."more of Marvin". So glad you are number one in this top 10 list. You will always be number one in my life. God bless you my brother.
Posted By: Cydney (Guest) on May 21, 2010 at 07:52 PM

That is pretty damn awesome, man. Thank you for sharing that.

How absurd... I'm not knocking any of your picks, because these are all great choices. I just think this list is ridiculous because I probably couldn't even give you a top 10 Motown artists.
Posted By: Guest#0151 (Guest) on May 22, 2010 at 01:22 AM

But that's the fun of it! Take a seemingly impossible task and try and make something out. Some weeks, there are fewer choices than other, and other weeks (like both last week and this week), you could make a great top ten list of the songs that weren't even honorable mentions. That's just how these things work sometimes.

Wow, NO Beatles for once. I was almost expecting an exemption provided with some crap reasoning like they influenced everyone on motown.

Seriously though, Marvin with one spot only. I heard it through the grapevine or aint no mountain high enough def deserved a position over The four Tops or Mary Wells.

Also ABC maybe the Jackson 5s most childish song, I woulda gone with Ill be There.

Oh well better than another Beatles lovefest Ten Deep.
Posted By: Beatles suck, give me the zep (Guest) on May 21, 2010 at 10:10 AM

Oh, Mr. Zeppelin Guy, you know I love you and seemingly irrational Beatles hatred. If you had seen, though, there's an unofficial rule for the list that each artist only gets one song, unless it's an artist specific list like this one. So therefore, only on Marvin song.

As far as "ABC" goes, I like the fact that it's somewhat childish. I mean, they were kids, and it's fun to hear the exuberance all throughout the song.



Top Ten Bob Dylan Songs



Robert Allen Zimmerman was born on May 24, 1941 in Minnesota, and a couple decades later, he'd become Bob Dylan and change the face of popular music forever. There has never been a songwriter like him before, and nobody since has been able to come close to matching him. All his great works sound great today, and he's also capable of producing some great works and putting on a solid live show. So in honor of his birthday, we present to you the Top Ten Bob Dylan Songs, right after we get to the honorable mentions:

Some Honorable Mentions: "Ballad of a Thin Man;" "Blowin' in the Wind;" "Cold Irons Bound;" "Hurricane;" "Mr. Tambourine Man;" "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands;" "Visions of Johanna"


Also, a big middle finger to Sony Music for keeping all Bob Dylan videos off of YouTube, meaning I had to go to some God-forsaken websites to find videos I cuold embed. These sites probably put some terrible malware on my computer and make this job much tougher than it needed to be. So screw you. Moving on...




10. "Masters of War"


"Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changing" may get held up as some of the great songs about social change from the 1960s, but Bob Dylan's best protest song is actually "Masters of War," a bitter take-down of those that lead us into battle that unfortunately is still quite relevant today. One of the key cuts off of Dylan's great second album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, "Masters of War" finds him at his vitriolic best. There are no choruses to speak of; instead replaced by a series of verses that tears down anybody that profits from the death of others. It's venomous and blistering and altogether stunning.





Some songs call for a sense of understanding or togetherness or such, "Masters of War." It's the type of song that proves that people need to be occasionally called up and taken to task for their actions. Dylan gets increasingly angry as the song goes, comparing war profiteers to Judas, and saying that "Even Jesus would never figure what you do," before wishing them death and stating that he'll stand over their graves. His voice never gets much louder throughout, but you can feel the seething as he sings those lyrics, and that's what makes this one of the great protests songs ever and a great example of the type of finger-pointing songwriting Dylan was great at.





9. "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again"


Dylan was always great at spinning these elliptical stories that, when looked at in a whole, didn't really make much sense but still managed to convey a feeling or atmosphere that was consistent all the through. One of the highlights of that style of songwriting was "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," one of the highlights of Blonde on Blonde, which is really saying something. There may not be much of a literal connection between the ragman that draws circles at the beginning of the song and the bricks that lay on Grand Street at the end of the song, but they both inhabit the same weird, unique world that Dylan created in this song.





As with many Dylan songs, the authority figures in "Mobile" are there to be criticized and are not to be trusted, and the narrator is pretty much trapped in this place the he can't even begin to comprehend. In this case, he seems to be literally stuck somewhere, this time Mobile, while pining for something else. Again, there are only continuous verses and no real refrain, but that's a much better way for Dylan to tell these kinds of stories, as opposed to a more conventional style. Also of aid was Dylan's stellar backing band that rides with him the entire seven minute duration of the song. "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" isn't one of Dylan's more heralded songs, but to me it certainly stands as one of his best.





8. "Lay Lady Lay"


The end of the 1960s saw Dylan make a move towards a country-influenced sound on the Nashville Skyline album, and the best result of that shift was the hit "Lay Lady Lay," one of the better straight-forwardly romantic songs in Dylan's catalog. Two of the more distinct qualities of Dylan's previous work were his nasally voice and the intricate lyrics, and neither of those qualities are present on "Lay Lady Lay," and despite that, the song is still one of his best. Replacing the nasally voice is a low croon that hasn't been heard on any of his albums before, although it did up on bootlegs from the early Sixties. And there were no deep, confusing lyrics here, either; instead, it was a pretty simple love song.





Lyrics like, "Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile/His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean/And you're the best thing that he's ever seen," aren't elliptical or all that multi-layered, but rather are upfront and emotional. The voice and lyrics, combined with the light arrangement, made for a more appealing Bob Dylan to most people, which makes it unsurprising that the song became a Top Ten hit. There are also some great hooks, and the overall effect makes for a Dylan that we didn't know existed up to that point.





7. "Don't Think Twice It's All Right"


When I made a list of the Top Ten Breakup songs, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" was the obvious choice for the top spot. It features Dylan channeling all that bitter energy from a song like "Masters of War" into something else: a goodbye and farewell to an ex-lover. Dylan never gets angry or sad, but instead remain stoic all the way through, and thereby giving his words a lot more bite than they would have had otherwise. With his finger-plucking guitar leading the way, Dylan makes no excuses and seeks to cut ties pretty directly, singing at the beginning "It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe/It don't matter, anyhow/And it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe/If you don't know by now."





As I mentioned, none of this sing in a bitter or angry tone, or through any yelling; instead, Dylan is calm and collected, as if all his opinions and emotions are facts and should be stated as thus. That's why the last verse is so crushing and effective. Dylan sings, "So long, honey babe, where I'm bound, I can't tell/But goodbye's too good a word, gal/So I'll just say fare thee well/I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind/You could have done better but I don't mind/You just kinda wasted my precious time/But don't think twice, it's all right." Those final two lines are particularly devastating and proof of why Dylan was so affective at this type of songwriting that managed to lay all the blame completely at somebody else's feet.





6. "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"


Of all Bob Dylan's songs, "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" probably has more memorable one-liners than any other, partly because the song is basically seven and a half minutes of free-form expressionism that, again, may not make complete sense in the sense of a coherent story, but shares the same DNA it its tone and attitude. The song was recorded in one full take, and it certainly feels that way, as if the song wasn't even really written, but instead just poured out of Dylan all at once. Obviously that's not the case, but the fact you could even consider that possibility shows just how natural this kind of amazing songwriting came to Dylan at this point in his career.





Through many of his songs that were released in the mid-1960s, Dylan seemed to be trying to figure out what was going on all around him, and many of his best songs came from that confusion and attempt to have it all make at least a bit of song. "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) is one of those songs, with Dylan singing both odd phrases and important ideas, like with the verse that goes, "Disillusioned words like bullets bark/As human gods aim for their mark/Make everything from toy guns that spark/To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark/It's easy to see without looking too far/That not much is really sacred." Ultimately, the onus is placed on the individual, partly because those in control can't figure it out for you anyway, and he even seems to find some level of understanding with those immortal last lines, "And if my thought-dreams could be seen/They'd probably put my head in a guillotine/But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only."





5. "Tangled Up in Blue"


By 1975 wasn't quite in the same exalted position in pop music he had been not even a decade earlier, while at the same time his marriage was falling apart. From all of that came Blood on the Tracks, arguably the greatest of all breakup albums and probably the most personal of all Bob Dylan albums. He had previously jumped from genre to genre, sometimes on the same album, but this was really the first time where his emotions jumped around, revealing a man in crisis working his way through a series of issues. The album opens with "Tangled Up in Blue," a song that is too ambiguous to be a true breakup song, but has the tone of someone coming to terms with their past.





The shifting of tenses and pronouns makes the song somewhat difficult to follow, but it at least appears to be about a love triangle, and each character gets an opportunity to tell a part of their story. Few songwriters would have had the ability, let alone the ingenuity, the frame a song in such a manner, but Dylan clearly isn't a typical songwriter. The problems and issues and complications abound throughout the song, with the narrator ultimately coming to the realization he needs to try and get his woman back and singing, "But me, I'm still on the road/Headin' for another joint/We always did feel the same/We just saw it from a different point of view/Tangled up in blue." Making a song like this could be a risk, but it paid off for Dylan as Blood on the Tracks restores his career to its rightful place.





4. "Highway 61 Revisited"


"Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"/Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"/God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"/God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but/The next time you see me comin' you better run"/Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"/God says, "Out on Highway 61." I added that whole thing because that may be my favorite verse in any song ever, and it's just too good to not mention in full. "Highway 61 Revisited" was the title track off of Dylan's first all-electric album, the record that put the nail in the coffin of folk troubadour Bob Dylan and signaled the cynical rock star Bob Dylan. This song was one of the best representations of that transition, as the song could in no way speak for anyone or anything else but Dylan's desire to tell a story.





That first verse is a somewhat ironic, possibly meaningful retelling of the story of Abraham (Dylan's father was named Abe), and it's also the only of the song's five verses that has ties to anything else. Those other four verses all feature Dylan-created characters (Georgia Sam, Mack the Finger, Louie the King, an unnamed roving gambler), and are delivered in the somewhat absurd and stream-of-conscious way to Dylan would be noted for at this period in time. The surreal imagery and rollicking garage rock helped solidify the new Dylan and helped make this album Dylan's absolute best.





3. "Subterranean Homesick Blues"


"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is somewhat famous just for its video, possibly the first music video, which features Dylan revealing cue cards with some of the song's lyrics, all the while Allen Ginsberg stands behind him in an alley. It's maybe the definitive Dylan clip, at least at that time, but it also features one of his best songs. The first half of Bringing It All Back Home completely blew past the boundaries of folk music and stunned and offended those who saw Dylan as the great folk hero. Dylan was less interested in social politics, though, and more interested in poetry, with "Subterranean Homesick Blues" leading the way as the album's first song.





This was the first song where Dylan eschewed typical conventions for writing pop music, opting to instead go with four verses, each delivered in a free association manner, and loaded with catch phrases that re both seemingly meaningless and deep, as with "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." In some ways the song was a protest, or at least portrayed a larger sense of discontent, like with, "Girl by the whirlpool/Lookin' for a new fool/Don't follow leaders/Watch the parkin' meters." Also, nobody has ever known how to wrap up a song in the last lines like Dylan, and this song is no exception as Dylan delivers another one-liner that is impossible to not like, as he finishes with "The pump don't work ‘cause the vandals took the handle."





2. "Desolation Row"


Out of all the great Bob Dylan songs, "Desolation Row" may be the most ambitious, an eleven minute acoustic song that probably requires an incredibly bright English professor to understand. A number of apparently disconnected references doesn't make understanding the song any easier, but they do make it fascinating to listen to , from beginning to end. I really have no idea what to make of "Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood, with his memories in a trunk," but it does evoke the kind of imagery that most pop and rock stars couldn't imagine themselves creating. If you were a songwriter in the mid-1960s, one listen to "Desolation Row" would have had to have been incredibly demoralizing, knowing there was someone out there capable of something like this.





You could spend a lot of time trying to figure out the meaning of this verse; "Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window/For her I feel so afraid/On her twenty-second birthday/She already is an old maid/To her, death is quite romantic/She wears an iron vest/Her profession's her religion/Her sin is her lifelessness/And though her eyes are fixed upon/Noah's great rainbow/She spends her time peeking/Into Desolation Row." I've not a clue what to make of most of that, and that can be said for pretty much every verse and most every lyric. That, plus the mentions of T.S. Eliot would make for a Lit major's wet dream, and part of the reason why Dylan is intriguing to listen to. Very little of what he writes is spelled out cleanly for you, and the mystery behind "Desolation Row" is as deep and interesting as with any Dylan song

.



1. "Like a Rolling Stone"


The bohemians of the Sixties may have seen Bob Dylan as their idol, but he almost eviscerated them with "Like a Rolling Stone," the finest Bob Dylan song and maybe the finest song in the history of rock and roll. It's still a bit of a mystery who specifically Dylan was singing about, but ultimately it's not too important since Dylan's lyrics take on an entire scene of people that he clearly has no time for. When he sings, "How does it feel/How does it feel/To be without a home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone?" his contempt for those he's addressing is clear and obvious, and that attitude is what makes the song so great. He pulls no punches at any point and makes no point in hiding his emotions. For all the people who called Dylan a "Judas" for picking up an electric guitar, that opening snare drum kick was a shot right at them.





Bruce Springsteen referred to it as that"snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind." That is certainly true, as the song once and for all changed what pop music what sound like and what Bob Dylan was capable of; nothing was off limits anymore. Oddly enough, for a song that led to so much, it's a somewhat dark and bitter song detailing the loss of innocence and acting as a wakeup call for those hipsters, and probably Dylan himself as well. All that wit and talent Dylan had used to fire at those in charge was now fired at himself and those anointed him as their leader, but the song warns against false idols. As Dylan sings at the end, "You used to be so amused/At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used/Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse/When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose/You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal." What it all boils down to is up to the individual listener, but that's the greatness of it; "Like a Rolling Stone" has so many layers to it that will never be completely unraveled. From the opening drum kick to the organ that rings out to the questions posed by Dylan, this is his greatest triumph and his absolute best song.



That'll do it for this week folks, thanks for reading. If you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to let me know, and make sure to leave your own lists in the comments. I'll see you all next week. And if you're out on your bike tonight, do wear white.