“It’s what a song makes you feel"

Bob Dylan's new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, has been reviewed many times in the last few days. I probably won't buy it, but comments about it have made it seem interesting, from a Brit who thinks him a "great man" to an American who thinks him a disturbing misogynist.

From The Telegraph:

Bob Dylan’s mischievously titled The Philosophy of Modern Song barely pretends to offer a coherent treatise on the state of contemporary songcraft. Rather, its lavishly and wittily illustrated 340 pages are an excuse for the great man to write with joyful zest, piercing profundity and flamboyant imagination about whatever crosses his mind....

At 81, Dylan can come across as a grumpy old man confronting the state of contemporary culture. “Everything is too full now; we are spoon-fed,” he complains in his appreciation of Hank Williams’s 1953 country classic Your Cheatin’ Heart. “All songs are about one thing and one thing specifically, there is no shading, no nuance, no mystery. Perhaps this is why music is not a place where people put their dreams at the moment; dreams suffocate in these airless environs. And it’s not just songs – movies, television shows, even clothing and food, everything is niche-marketed and overly fussed with. ....

“People can keep trying to turn music into a science, but in science one and one will always be two. Music, like all art, including the art of romance, tells us time and again that one plus one, in the best circumstances, equals three.” For Dylan, songs are metaphysics and alchemy. This book is lightning in a bottle.

The Washington Post:

It has 66 brief vignettes about memorable sides cut by performers ranging from the Sun Records also-ran Jimmy Wages to the 1940s multithreat Perry Como to Dylan’s old touring buddies the Grateful Dead to his musical inheritors, like Elvis Costello and the Clash. ....

These essays are not all terrifying verdicts on the fate of a corrupted humanity. There are history lessons, too! ....

Oftentimes, when interrogated about himself and his views, he is something of a pill: evasive, defensive and not infrequently ornery. But when speaking about peers and progenitors in the field of songwriting, the mood shifts. He has routinely been thoughtful, insightful and uncommonly generous to those with whom he shares the arena.

The Philosophy of Modern Song is the great manifestation of that praiseful impulse. Dylan has his nitpicks, but this is mostly a liturgy. Here are 66 instances of beauty, anxiety and deliverance that taken together would make a satisfying last will and testimony....

Los Angeles Times:

“Knowing a singer’s life story doesn’t particularly help your understanding of a song,” Dylan writes. “It’s what a song makes you feel about your own life that’s important.” ....

Most of us fall hard for pop music as adolescents and never quite shake the stranglehold those formative hits have on our consciousness. Dylan is no different. Twenty-eight songs in the book date from the 1950s. Nine were released in 1956, the year Dylan turned 15.

He also writes about ‘60s and ‘70s rock anthems — the Who’s “My Generation,” the Clash’s “London Calling” — and makes a couple of excursions into the ‘80s catalog of Willie Nelson. But it’s clear that Dylan’s definition of “modern song” does not extend into the hip-hop era. ....

...[C]oherence isn’t what you want from Bob Dylan. What you want is to watch songs ping-pong around his brain; you want a close encounter with his mind. Unfortunately, that same mind is the storehouse for some extremely dark and disturbing ideas about — to use the retrograde term that Dylan himself employs — the opposite sex. ....

Dylan makes the obvious but important point that pop lyrics, which may “seem so slight” when read, are “written for the ear and not for the eye.” It’s when those words are set to music and dramatized by a singer of skill and sympathy that the magical transmutation occurs.

Dylan is a brilliant songwriter, of course; the truth is, he’s a better singer, a master vocal stylist whose performances speak to the deeps of human emotion even when they carry unseemly attitudes and ideas. ....

Neil McCormick, "Bob Dylan tackles pop, polygamy and PC culture with wicked wit," The Telegraph, Oct. 29, 2022, Elizabeth Nelson, "Bob Dylan takes us on a wide-ranging tour of songs he admires,"The Washington Post, Oct. 31, 2022, Jody Rosen, "Bob Dylan’s new book is revealing, misogynistic and a special kind of bonkers," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 2022.