The one musician Bob Dylan said never wrote a bad song: “I can’t think of any”
Bob Dylan is an artist of near incomparable magnitude… but he’s written bad songs (see ‘Wiggle Wiggle’ and ‘Emotionally Yours’ for details). The odd dud is par for the course when you’re continually dipping into the ether and trying to impact the future. However, there are a few songwriters who find themselves in such a knack that they seem to have mastered their craft.
For Dylan, this star was Gordon Lightfoot. When the Canadian songwriter passed away earlier this year, Dylan said he did so “without ever having made a bad song.” This wasn’t sentimentalism given the circumstances, in the past, Dylan had explained: “Gordo’s been around as long as me,“ as he affectionately called him. “‘Shadows’, ‘Sundown’, ‘If You Could Read My Mind.’ I can’t think of any I don’t like.”
In a 2011 interview with Bill Flanagan, Dylan unsurprisingly listed the country-folk cult hero among his favourite songwriters. “Buffett, I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy [Newman]. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers,” he said. And by ”those kinds”, we’re perhaps dealing with poetic storytelling writers, which prompts Dylan to say, ”Every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever.”
Over the years, Dylan has continually eulogised his friend as though willing him to edge closer to the mainstream’s attention. “I can’t think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don’t like,“ he repeated in high praise. “Lightfoot became a mentor for a long time. I think he probably still is to this day.”
The admiration is also mutual, with Lightfoot once telling Forbes: ”Which song do I really love by Bob Dylan? There are so many. He’s a huge influence on me, actually, although my writing is nothing like his at all. It’s totally different, And yet he was such a huge influence on me. I’d have to go back to ‘Blowin’ In The Wind,’ I’m just gonna go standard with this guy.”
This was further evidenced when Lightfoot was being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and it was asked, ”Who inspires Gordon Lightfoot? When asked who was your favourite songwriter? Gordon said, ‘Of all the multitudes around, I’d have to go with Bob Dylan.” And so, Dylan appeared to induct him personally, quipping: ”I know he’s been offered this award before, but he has never accepted it because he wanted me to come and give it to him.”
In the past, Dylan had even tried to emulate him. “I thought if he could get that sound, I could,“ he said of Lightfoot’s influence on his album John Wesley Harding. “But we couldn’t get it.” Thereafter, he was just happy to covet him from afar.
What Dylan seemed to recognise in Lightfoot was a rare steadiness. While many songwriters chase reinvention or flirt with excess, Lightfoot refined a singular voice built on clarity and narrative grace. His songs rarely strained for effect, instead unfolding with patience and quiet authority. That consistency is perhaps what Dylan meant when he suggested there was not a weak link in the catalogue.
In an era where prolific output often invites uneven results, Lightfoot’s reputation stands as something close to mythic. For Dylan, a writer who has never shied away from risk or imperfection, such restraint must have felt almost miraculous. Their mutual admiration was not rooted in similarity, but in recognition, two craftsmen acknowledging the difficulty of sustaining excellence over decades without losing sight of the song itself.
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