The Bob Dylan Problem
is not his voice, ruin that it is
when he attempts tonal breath control,
but his ambition through all the words
that he has written for himself
the hymn to the human universe,
as if he were it's only songwriter.
This problem was shown up most cruelly
when the BBC payed tribute to his song writing
with a collection of clips of covers of his songs
from a wide variety of performers of varying standards
from their six decade long light entertainment archive.
When the Dylan song catalogue is covered
as thoughtlessly by middle-of-the-road artists
as it is covered thoughtfully by those with an affinity
for the experience behind a sensitive lyric,
in a voice that can express feelings with passion,
with no sense of difference between any of the artists
then what is the point? Long thought to be barely alive,
the song writer who once wrote about 'the personal'
simply gets buried by his historic popularity.
No comments:
Post a Comment