Top Songs of 2012 – #8
I’ve gotten used to the high quality of Bob Dylan’s recent albums. Unlike the 80s and 90s, there is no longer a fear in the back of my head that his next release might be a real head-scratcher.
This is probably where some of you will chime in and bring up his recent Christmas album (appropriate given the date), to which I’d reply that I actually enjoy that novelty release quite a bit. I’ll take Dylan’s gravelly ‘Little Drummer Boy‘ over most versions, thank you very much.
When this song came up in the random rotation, I was certain I’d featured it before. But apart from a cover version by a hot chick on a ukulele, I have not.
‘Most of the Time’ is Exhibit A (or maybe Exhibit B, with ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ as Exhibit A) of the wonders Danial Lanois worked for Bob Dylan on the 1989 album Oh Mercy.
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Bob Dylan was told about a critic who said that Justin Bieber couldn’t sing any of the songs on Tempest, Dylan’s new album. Dylan replied, “I couldn’t sing any of his songs either.”
That exchange captures what’s great about Dylan’s output over the past two decades.
The man’s voice is shot, no question. He has never had much range, but he sounds like Bono on his early albums when compared to his recent work.
One of the downsides of a truly random selection — such as that of my Random Weekend Songs of the Day — is that you wind up with clusters.
I haven’t checked the numbers, but it seems like tracks from Dylan’s Bootleg Series have turned up here on a pretty regular basis. Granted, he has released nine volumes of those bootlegs — all double-CD sets — so those songs make up a healthy percentage of my music collection. Around 3 percent, to be exact.
But 3-in-100 odds aren’t exactly the sort you’d bet heavily on in Vegas. Mathematically, these songs are over-performing.
Arriving at an artist like Bob Dylan during this musical genome project, I find the script has flipped.
It suddenly doesn’t make much sense to talk about my appreciation for Dylan’s music in terms of how he fits into my five categories. Rather, it becomes pretty clear that Bob Dylan’s music is likely the reason I’m drawn to those categories in the first place.
Bob Dylan is without question the most important musical influence of my life. I discovered him in my mid-teens, when the reptilian centers of my brain were still evolving, when I was quickly becoming the person I would forever be.
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