Tag Archives: Another Side of Bob Dylan

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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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