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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