Key lyric: “Preacher was a-talkin’, there’s a sermon he gave/ He said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved/ You cannot depend on it to be your guide/ When it’s you who must keep it satisfied”Ī welcome return for Dylan’s skepticism and cynicism after his frankly weird born-again Christian period. “Man in the Long Black Coat,” from Oh Mercy, 1989 Quite who Maggie is and where her farm was remain the subject of some debate - the general consensus seems to be that the lady and her farm functioned as a metaphor for Dylan’s declaration of independence from the protest folk music with which he had hitherto been identified - but in any case, this is right up there with The Clash’s “Clash City Rockers” as one of music’s great “screw you and this shitty job” emancipation anthems. Key lyric: “I try my best/ To be just like I am/ But everybody wants you/ To be just like them/ They sing while you slave/ And I just get bored” “Maggie’s Farm,” from Bringing It All Back Home, 1965 Its denouement is shot through with the sort of black humor that Dylan’s old contemporary Warren Zevon would be proud of: “It’s not dark yet/ But it’s getting there.” Time Out of Mind is generally celebrated as Dylan’s latter-day masterpiece, and this song found the singer reflecting on life, its title serving as both a statement of defiant intent and an acknowledgement of mortality.
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Key lyric: “I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies/ I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes” “Not Dark Yet,” from Time Out of Mind, 1997
Although we’re not entirely sure we buy this, whatever the provenance of the lyrics, they’re some of his best - and none more so than this, which was breathtakingly bitter but also ultimately forlorn at the demise of the relationship it depicted (“I can’t feel you anymore, I can’t even touch the books you’ve read/ Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishin’ I was somebody else instead.”) To this day, Dylan insists that the awfully personal-sounding lyrics from Blood on the Tracks weren’t personal at all, but instead inspired by Chekhov’s short stories.
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Key lyric: “Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth/ You’re an idiot, babe/ It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe” “Idiot Wind,” from Blood on the Tracks, 1975 Sadly, the publicity it generated wasn’t enough to help Carter - it wasn’t until 1988 that all charges against him were dropped. It’s strident and angry without ever being overly didactic - Dylan catalogs the injustices meted out to former boxer and falsely accused murder suspect Rubin Carter in a manner that manages to be matter-of-fact while burning with outrage.
Our all-time favorite Dylan song, and we’re not sure if that many people would disagree with us. Key lyric: “How can the life of such a man/ Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?/ To see him obviously framed/ Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed/ To live in a land/ Where justice is a game” Of course, this is entirely subjective, so do let us know your favorites, too. Anyway, we’re not Dylan haters here, and in celebration of the arrival of his new album Tempest, which is out tomorrow, we thought we’d share our all-time favorite Dylan lyrics. Predictably enough, including Bob Dylan in said feature set off something of a comments section firestorm, even though we were pretty clear about the fact that we didn’t think the lyricists in question were bad - just perhaps not as great as people liked to make out. About this time last year, we ran a post about lyricists who we thought were somewhat overrated.
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