The Bob Dylan lyrics that deserve to be deleted from history: “I set my monkey on the log”
It’s hard to talk about lyrics and the very art of poetic pop musings without dangling our fingers over Bob Dylan, one of the most accomplished lyricists of his day. But he also had a stinker or two.
Trying to find the worst lyric of your everyday artist is usually something enjoyable to do. Despite our best intentions, as humans, we enjoy revelling in the worst parts of the creative spectrum just as much as we do celebrating the finest.
In fact, there’s a good argument – one found in the collection of algorithms located within our pockets – that diving into the unpleasant waters of our favourite artists can cleanse us as neatly as bathing in their more beautiful work. However, things get a little tricky when the artist in question is Bob Dylan.
At this point, it seems a little redundant to speak on the huge impact Dylan had on lyric writing as a whole. The troubadour was a convenient spark for the counter-cultural revolution who was able to carry the burning embers of poetry into the pop world and create a collection of folk songs that would soon transcend their homestead in the smoky coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, New York, to become worldwide hits that would inspire not just contemporaries like The Beatles, Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell but pretty much every artist you love today, too.
Few pop singers have been awarded a Nobel Prize for literature for their magnetic songs and Dylan’s position as perhaps the greatest lyricist of all time is guaranteed because of this. He has delivered over 600 songs in his time as one of the icons of the music world, and his hefty back catalogue also netted him $300million when he sold it to Columbia recently. But with every expanse of work like Dylan’s, there is undoubtedly a spectrum of quality to dive into.
That’s the strange paradox of someone like Dylan. The higher the pedestal, the more noticeable the cracks become. When an artist spends so much of their career redefining what lyrics can achieve, even the smallest misstep feels magnified. It’s not just about a bad line here or there, it’s about how those lines sit alongside some of the most revered writing in popular music, creating a contrast that’s almost impossible to ignore.
At the same time, those weaker moments offer a glimpse into the sheer volume and freedom of his output. Dylan was never the kind of writer to self-censor into silence, and that willingness to follow an idea wherever it led is part of what made him so vital in the first place. Not every experiment was going to land, but without that openness, the brilliance wouldn’t have existed either, leaving behind a catalogue that feels as human as it does legendary.
Lavishing our cerebral cortex and eardrums with the one-two of brilliance Dylan can provide lyrically is all well and good. “How does it feel / How does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?” from ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ is unqualified genius. Equally, certain sections of ‘Masters of War’ or ‘Positively 4th Street’ or ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ or countless other tunes can be considered poetry of the highest order.
However, every totemic pillar of prose is a basement-level dirge of diatribe, and Dylan certainly has a few of those. There are several contenders for Dylan’s worst lyric, and perhaps the finest place to start is his unwanted ‘Ballad in Plain D’, which is only suggested because of Dylan’s issues with it and is arguably one of the only tunes that Dylan himself regrets writing, telling author Bill Flanagan in 1985: “Oh! Yeah. That one… That one I look back and I say, ‘I must have been a real schmuck to write that.’ I look back at that particular one and say, of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.”
The next contender is ‘Wiggle Wiggle’, a track most commonly thought of as one of Dylan’s worst tunes of all time. It’s not entirely clear if the song was a deliberate joke, but lyrics like “Wiggle to the front, wiggle to the rear / Wiggle till you wiggle right out of here / Wiggle till it opens, wiggle till it shuts / Wiggle till it bites, wiggle till it cuts,” are hardly inspiring. They must have left Dylan in cold sweats when selling his back catalogue, afraid that the bosses at Columbia might drop their price. However, ‘Wiggle Wiggle’ gets off on the technicality that it simply must have been a joke.
There is a run of single lines that also feel a bit off-kilter, “The sun ain’t yellow, it’s chicken” may be a reference to Sun records, but it still lands awfully. The ‘Ring Them Bells’ lyric is equally embarrassing: “For it’s rush hour now / for the wheel and the plow / and the sun is going down upon the sacred cow.” While another from ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’ is tortuous, to say the least: “I asked the captain what his name was and how come he didn’t drive a truck / He said his name was Columbus and I just said ‘good luck’.”
But there can be no doubt that when diving into ‘I Shall Be Free No.10’, you will stumble across a plethora of cringe-inducing couplets. Taken from Another Side of Bob Dylan, the song seemingly aims to showcase Dylan’s egalitarian view with a side order of surrealist humour. But, given Dylan’s inability to avoid earnestness, the lyrics that take on the Cold War, “Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told / The streets in heaven are lined with gold / I ask you how things could get much worse / If the Russians happen to get up there first / Wowee! pretty scary!” should never end that way.
It continues as he dismisses Barry Goldwater from ever marrying his daughter, complains about not being able to play tennis, his “mean” woman not washing his clothes correctly, or his wish to “ride into Omaha on a horse, out to the country club and the golf course.” However, when looking for one clear winner (or loser) of the contest, it is difficult to look past the nonsensical lyrics: “Well, I set my monkey on the log / And ordered him to do the Dog / He wagged his tail and shook his head / And he went and did the Cat instead / He’s a weird monkey, very funky”. It is unconscionably awful, feeling like a nursery rhyme written by the local beat poet and the back end of a children’s show one watches when recovering from an LSD trip.
Now, there is likely to be a subsection of Dylan’s fans who will be willing to defend this work as absurdist poetry incarnate. by making his lyrics feel stupefied to the point of repulsion, he is highlighting the inane differences maintained between class structures. Through Dylan’s wit, he takes potshots at societal contradictions, the intricacies of humanity, and the crumbling, chaotic world that Dylan is observing. However, it is clear that those people have never sat through a poetry evening at your local venue.
The world is full of half-baked “absurdist” ideas on society’s inability to find logic within itself. It is as usual as the patchouli smoke that wafts in as the orators of such mawkishly cobbled couplets enter the room with an unwavering sense of comfort that they will be the funniest person in the room. For Dylan to assume this role with all the winking energy of your most annoying relative about to make the dinner table a stand-up show is to belie the work that made him one of pop music’s finest thinkers.
A writer shouldn’t always have to be serious. But when trying to make a serious point, a level of respect should at least be adhered to. Using humour to make the point is certainly a good way to go, but lines like “Yipee! I’m a poet and I know it / Hope I don’t blow it” are enough to make you hurl tomatoes at the stage.
‘I Shall be Free No.10’ reveals a part of young Dylan’s character that few of his fans need to witness. And, as one might say to a child mooning in an attempt to make people laugh, I too will say to Dylan: I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.
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