Bob Dylan’s favourite songs from his favourite songwriters
Which significant artist with serious songwriting kudos would carry the most weight if they complimented your work? Would you want the pop music genius of Paul McCartney or perhaps the otherworldly influence of Robert Hunter? The emotional breadth of Joni Mitchell would make for a killer compliment, but so would the stark poetic qualities of Carole King. No matter what style you gravitate towards, nobody has built a bigger reputation for songwriting prowess than Bob Dylan.
Even though he mostly stuck to covering classic American folk tunes in his earliest days, Dylan soon found his nice as a writer rather than as an interpreter. Through more than 60 years of incredible output, Dylan virtually became the poet laureate of American music, so much so that he was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Acclaim doesn’t get any higher than Bob Dylan-levels of distinction.
But who does Dylan think are the great songwriters of his generation? Some of the answers might surprise you, not least of which is Gulf and Western superstar Jimmy Buffett. In an interview with HuffPost back in 2009, Dylan praised Buffett’s ‘Death of an Unpopular Poet’ and ‘He Went to Paris’ as some of his favourite songs. No word on what thinks of ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’, though.
In the same interview, Dylan shed some light on some of his other favourite songwriters. Gordon Lightfoot was one, with Dylan highlighting the songs ‘Shadows’, ‘Sundown’ and ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ as particular favourites. He also made a point of stating that he couldn’t think of any songs from Lightfoot that he didn’t like. Now that’s high praise.
Next on the list was the late great Warren Zevon. “There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they’re all effortlessly connected,” Dylan gushed. “Zevon was a musician’s musician, a tortured one. ‘Desperado Under the Eaves’. It’s all in there.”
He adds: “‘Lawyers, Guns and Money’, ‘Boom Boom Mancini’, down hard stuff. ‘Join Me In L.A’ sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primaeval. His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he’s classically trained.”
Sticking with American songwriters who weren’t afraid to get goofy on the way to being clever, Dylan passed the spotlight onto a true original, Randy Newman. “Yeah, Randy. What can you say? I like his early songs,” Dylan explained. “‘Sail Away’, ‘Burn Down the Cornfield’, ‘Louisiana’, where he kept it simple. Bordello songs. I think of him as the Crown Prince, the heir apparent to Jelly Roll Morton. His style is deceiving. He’s so laid back that you kind of forget he’s saying important things. Randy’s sort of tied to a different era like I am.”
Dylan also made sure to include the legendary insights of John Prine when listing his favourite songwriters. “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” Dylan claimed. “Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about ‘Sam Stone’ the soldier junky daddy and ‘Donald and Lydia,’ where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that.”
Check out a playlist of Dylan’s favourite songs from his favourite songwriters down below.
Bob Dylan’s favourite songs from his favourite songwriters:
- Jimmy Buffett: ‘Death of an Unpopular Poet’, ‘He Went to Paris’
- Gordon Lightfoot: ‘Shadows’, ‘Sundown’, ‘If You Could Read My Mind’
- Warren Zevon: ‘Desperado Under the Eaves’, ‘Lawyers, Guns, and Money’, ‘Boom Boom Mancini’, ‘Join Me In L.A.’
- Randy Newman: ‘Sail Away’, ‘Burn Down the Cornfield’, ‘Louisiana’
- John Prine: ‘Sam Stone’, ‘Donald and Lydia’
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