My Top Ten Bob Dylan Songs (All About Music)

Member Name: markhobbs

Product:	All About Music
Date:	12/08/01 (645 review reads)
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Advantages: It's Bob Dylan

Disadvantages: How dare you even suggest ther's something wrong with him or them

Picking my favourite Bob Dylan songs was just as hard as selecting was just as hard as selecting my favourite songs in general. He has such an amazingly large and tremendously good back catalogue, it’s hard to know where to begin. But I have done my best, I’ve most definitely forgotten some brilliant and era defining songs, but hey, what ya gonna do? Just sit back and enjoy the melodic and soothing tendencies of what can only be described as my op. Oh, and they’re in no particular order.

True Love Tends to Forget

Perhaps it’s not the best received of Dylan albums, but Street Legal does boast some really good tunes. The best of these is probably True Love Tends to Forget. It’s weird to hear Dylan really singing, and he doesn’t do too bad a job either. Some good guitar in between verses and some nice sprinklings of what I assume is sax in the background. Maybe he could have done without the female backing vocals, but it’s still a lovely song.

Blowin’ in the Wind

A song from the days when a song by Bob Dylan was a song by Bob Dylan, and not a song from Bob Dylan and about fifty other hygienically challenged musicians. It’s just Bob, an acoustic guitar, a harmonica stuck to his head and a whole lot of rhetorical questions. Features the classic line ‘ How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?’. His voice is a lot clearer than in the rest of his albums, making it sound really fresh and exciting, even to this day.

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

One of four acoustic, and indeed, perfect songs from Dylan’s first electric album.
It’s more barked than sung, an attack on society. It’s still amazingly relevant in today’s world :

‘ Advertising signs they con you
Into believing you’re the one
W
ho can do what’s never been done
Who can win what’s never been won
Meanwhile outside life goes on all around you’

Brilliant stuff. For someone who was generally regard as being a pretty crappy guitar player, he gets great rhythm and sound out of it on this song.

Just Like a Woman

Poor old Bob, he doesn’t seem to have much luck with the opposite sex. With three failed marriages no wonder he’s ‘sick of love’. Yes, this bitter love song sees Bob not quite knowing what to make of them. He sees that they’re beautiful and endearing, but he sees the manipulative side as well. He seems to be talking about the end of a relationship, as he sings ‘ Ain’t it clear that- I just can’t fit’. Some really quite outstandingly beautiful harmonica and guitar make this one of Dylan’s most famous songs.

Mr. Tambourine Man

This is poetry of the highest order. To take some relatively simple guitar and to add something so beautiful, something so remarkably ahead of it’s time, it just works so well.


Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready to for fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it

It’s just so flowing and melodic, a very special song.

Hurricane

A very important song politically, this was the only song proclaiming the innocence of Rubin Carter, the boxer who was framed for murder. It’s an eight minute run through of the events
of the night of the murder, and the trial where he was falsely found guilty. The violin works well, making it your quite untypical Dylan song.

Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

This has to be the single best thing a guy has ever written about a girl. Bob sings a fifteen minute tribute to his wife, again it’s sheer poetry, the words and imagery are just something that have to be experienced first hand. He probably forgot her birthday. It’s one of his best vocal performances ever, he manages to carry such amazing feeling that I think I love her too.

Desolation Row

Yet another epic. One of those songs that give you goose bumps….every time you hear it. Lovely, lovely guitar, very soothing. I’m not quite sure what it’s about; it’s typically ambiguous and delusional. So if anybody could tell me… One of the best moments of my life was when he played it live, I know it sounds very dramatic, but my God was it good.

Like A Rolling Stone

Perhaps Bob’s most famous song, it’s certainly one of his more powerful anthems. It’s a very fast and uptempo, something to really to get you going. I can kind of see where you’re coming from Padders, but only some of the lyric seem to point in that direction. He thinks that it’s about all the fans that worship because of his status as the big thing, and with him changing his music they’re left without a leader. I’m not really sure what I think.

Visions of Johanna

This is the single best song in the history of songs. Well maybe not, but it’s up there anyway. It’s about a restless night, Bob’s thoughts being played out in his mind and on the walls. The lead guitar just makes it, it’s wonderfully twangy and loose. This song is the lyrical equivalent of the pyramids, it’s so amazingly ‘there’, and yet it’s somehow mysterious and un
explainable. Nice.


Well, I hope I’ve been of some help to you. I always like to hear of Bob Dylan related stuff, so if you’ve been at a gig recently or you just want to say how much you like him, go right ahead…

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