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Song of the Day #577: ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ – Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s third album of original material, Another Side of Bob Dylan, was very appropriately titled (even though Dylan himself later said he disliked the title for being so obvious). After making his name as a singer and writer of political protest songs, Dylan’s new record was a far more intimate affair.

Dylan caused outrage when he later “went electric” (and we’ll get to that on future weekends) but he received a whole lot of grief before that just for trading issue songs for introspective songs. Folkies bashed him for navel-gazing when he should have been saving the world. It’s fascinating exactly how rigid the confines of genres were back then, or at least the genre into which Dylan originally exploded.

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Song of the Day #576: ‘I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)’ – Bob Dylan

Yesterday’s Dar Williams post is a nice segue into another Bob Dylan weekend, because Dylan is certainly another example — perhaps the best example — of an artist whose lyrics are just as effective on paper as in song. Some people would argue that his voice actually detracts from the power of his words, though I strongly disagree.

I’m pretty certain Dylan writes the lyrics of his songs before the music. He also goes off text quite a bit when performing, as you’ll see over the course of these weekends. All of the lyrics I post here are from Dylan’s own Web site — they are the official lyrics of his songs. And yet if you follow along as he sings them, you’ll find he mixes and matched verses, changes phrasing, adds and drops words on the fly.

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Song of the Day #575: ‘The End of the Summer’ – Dar Williams

Of all the artists in my music collection, Dar Williams is one of the few whose songs I would just as soon read in a book as listen to on record. That’s not a criticism of her voice or melodic gifts — she’s pretty great on that front as well — but a testament to the power of her poetry.

Because Williams is a poet, a label I wouldn’t assign to most songwriters. Songs are generally meant to be listened to, not read, and laying them out on paper (or a computer screen) makes that very obvious. And I don’t mean that as a criticism to most songwriters… I’m guessing they fully appreciate the difference between song lyrics and poetry.

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Song of the Day #574: Ke$ha – ‘TiK ToK’

After missing so many pop star hitmakers over the years I feel like I’m finally in the right place at the right time to discover Ke$ha. Of course, I just found out that her hit song ‘TiK ToK’ actually came out in August of last year, so I guess I’m not as hip as I thought.

But her debut album, Animal, was released just a few weeks ago. I don’t own it, nor do I plan to, but I know who she is and that’s a start. I’m also immensely grateful to her for knocking Susan Boyle off the top of the charts after the Scot’s impressive run. I don’t know why I harbor such disdain for Susan Boyle, but I can’t deny that I do.

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Song of the Day #573: ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ – R.E.M.

One of the unintended consequences of my theme weeks is that I’m quick to rule out artists I’ve already covered when pulling songs for the non-theme weeks. So a band like R.E.M., which I covered in a theme week over a year ago, hasn’t been featured on the blog since. And that just ain’t right.

So I’m going to make an effort to revisit some of my favorite bands a song at a time in the non-theme weeks from now on. I’ve now covered enough ground that repetition of artists is unavoidable. And I can think of few better bands than R.E.M. to revisit song-by-song. They have so damn many good ones.

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