Following Dylan’s birthday last Monday, I want to continue my exploration of his music and what it’s meant to me. So, welcome to the Dylan List Series, which I think will be about three posts. Totally counts as a series. Today I want to share my favorite Dylan songs. But, just a disclaimer, this means almost nothing. I mean, there’s a Dylan song for every mood: angry, thoughtful, funny, bitter, you name it. When I started compiling this list I discovered that 10 songs means including barely the obvious choices and the top of the top from my “Best of Dylan” Spotify playlist (which is already very curated). Anyways. Here we go.
Runner-up. “Changing of the Guards”
Album: Street-Legal
I’m adding only one because I already wrote this one but then decided I couldn’t skip “Visions of Johanna.” There could easily be more runners-up.
An underrated gem from an underrated album, it’s the backsingers who make a half of this song’s charm with their late interjections which they seem to be improvising – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I also love the intensity of the story and no one does story songs like Dylan. He paints movie-like pictures, not always understandable but so easy to see. This one is like a dark fairy-tale.
Favorite bit of lyrics: I can’t choose for this one. This is such a murky story, where you never know who the pronouns refer to that I just let it wash over me. We’ll get to clearer storytelling though.
10. “Visions of Johanna”
Album: Blonde on Blonde and The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966
This is one of my favorite songs ever since I even started listening to Dylan but I’ve heard it so many times that I almost don’t have any reason to listen to it anymore. Don’t know if you ever experience that but it’s happened to me with a few of his songs (and albums even), which might explain some of the glaring omissions from this list. However, it’s a perfect example of his byzantine, surreal worlds.
Favorite bit of lyrics: “We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it.” When I was younger and even more pretentious I used to put it on all sorts of things: notebooks, websites – and think myself deep.
9. “Dark Eyes”
Album: Empire Burlesque
This is such an atmospheric song, one of Dylan’s surreal, onirical landscapes but made gentler than many others through the melody. But I especially love it for this version (fair warning: it’s an old youtube video) that I found once and fell in love with, where Dylan sings with Patti Smith and you can see they are friends. In all honesty though, I have no idea what this song means and maybe I’m not supposed to.
Favorite bit of lyrics: “They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes / They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I’m sure it is / But I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognized” – such a powerful fragment.
8. “Mama, You Been on My Mind”
Album: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975
This is the album that accompanied my first part of my first college and this song especially livened up many a boring lecture as it played in my mind (and there were many lectures to enliven). The delivery is so lively, cheerful, with incredible energy even for this album and Baez complements Dylan so well, especially when they’re not quite in time.
Favorite bit of lyrics: “When you wake up in the mornin’, baby, look inside your mirror / You know I won’t be next to you, you know I won’t be near / I’d just be curious to know if you can see yourself as clear / As someone who has had you on his (her) mind.”
7. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”
Album: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Such a detached, humorous – but still not flat, especially for such a young artist – way of talking about a breakup. Dylan has many songs to listen to when you want to feel vindictive but this one feels especially powerful in its irony. It always makes me smile.
Favorite bit of lyrics: And the irony is nowhere more evident than in the ending, “I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind / You coulda done better but I don’t mind / You just kinda wasted my precious time / But don’t think twice, it’s all right.”
6. “Billy 4”
Album: Pat Garret & Billy the Kid
The whole album is wonderful but this version of “Billy,” the longest and the most coherent, lets you listen to the story the easiest and so I pick it. It’s a wonder Dylan didn’t write more film music because once he did, he created a masterpiece. Another one. Note: It’s interesting to compare this to “Billy 1,” how he can change the mood irregardless of the words.
Favorite bit of lyrics: I don’t think there’s a couple of lines that I’m particularly attached to, I just like my movies in a song form.
5. “Maybe Someday”
Album: Knocked Out Loaded
Talk about underrated. This is a song I never knew until I made it into a project to listen to all of Dylan available on Spotify and I fell in love with this one. It’s a pop version of Dylan but it still is so smart, and he does Springsteen better than Springsteen. His almost manic delivery makes it quite special. But the best part is that this is the one Dylan song my husband actually enjoys listening to.
Favorite bit of lyrics: Despite the misleading arrangement, the lyrics are actually very Dylanesque. But I especially enjoy this joke: “You said you were goin’ to Frisco, stay a couple of months / I always liked San Francisco, I was there for a party once.” Also: “Maybe someday, you will understand / That something for nothing is everybody’s plan.”
4. “Like a Rolling Stone”
Album: Highway 61 Revisited
This is another song that I almost have no reason to listen to anymore, having heard and enjoyed it so many times but at the same time it might be the best song ever written. By anyone. Thus, the compromise in the fourth place. Like any sane person, I enjoy when Dylan is righteously angry.
Favorite bit of lyrics: Maybe “Aw, you’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely / But ya know ya only used to get juiced in it.”
3. “Love Minus Zero”
Album: Bringing It All Back Home
Already wrote about it here.
2. “To Ramona”
Album: Another Side of Bob Dylan
Also wrote about it, a while ago. Read it here, if you want to. Love forever.
1. “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”
Album: Blood on the Tracks
I first heard this song in high school, still innocent enough to be embarrassed about liking something resembling country. But I don’t think a song has ever blown my mind as much as this one did and keeps doing. Dylan tells stories all the time in his songs but mostly in the vague, poetic way. Here, he writes a song which is a short story – that you can tap your foot to. It even has a twist at the end. If I ever planned on writing songs, that’s the kind of a song I would dream of writing.
Favorite bit of lyrics: “She slipped in through the side door lookin’ like a queen without a crown / She fluttered her false eyelashes and whispered in his ear / ‘Sorry, darlin’, that I’m late,’ but he didn’t seem to hear”
Guys, I’ll be honest with you: I feel almost dirty for having to leave out some of the songs that’ve been with me for decades now and that used to be so important to me, like “Desolation Row,” “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” all of Desire. And more, always more. But the point of this little exercise that no one save me cares about was to eliminate so there. Coming up next, the list of my favorite albums, which I expect to be easier and not really surprising.
Eurydice Rambling 