The controversial 1983 lyric Bob Dylan wishes he could change: “Didn’t come out exactly the way I wanted”
We have all said things in the heat of the moment that we wish we could retract, and it would appear as though a wordsmith of Bob Dylan’s ilk is no different.
For all the hundreds of songs the Nobel Prize-winning lyricist has penned over the years, there are bound to be a few that haven’t aged quite so gracefully, and ‘Sweetheart Like You’ certainly falls into that category.
It is a testament to the quality of Dylan’s writing that even some of his earliest works, from back in his Greenwich Village era in the 1960s, still sound impressively cutting-edge. The message at the heart of those countercultural anthems is still largely applicable to this day, and perhaps that is why generation after generation of music fans seem to connect to the songwriting of the folk hero. Still, Dylan’s discography certainly did stop at Nashville Skyline.
As the neon-hued age of the 1980s dawned, in fact, Dylan was still immersed in the gospel-infused Christian rock that he had adopted – much to the surprise of his audience, record label, and virtually everyone else – towards the tail-end of the previous decade. Throughout his career, Dylan has consistently switched up his sound, refusing to remain in one avenue of inspiration for too long, but his Christian period would prove particularly tricky to transition out of.
Eventually, of course, the songwriter left that sound in the rear-view mirror, with the aid of the 1983 record Infidels. Among the record’s adoption of heartland rock and even some influences of reggae, Infidels contained a marked return to form for Dylan’s discography. However, it is no surprise that many listeners struggled to make it past the second track, ‘Sweetheart Like You’.
Containing the cringeworthy and, at first glance, misogynistic lyrics, “You know, a woman like you should be at home. That’s where you belong,” it doesn’t take a gender politics expert to understand why some audiences took issue with the track.
Here was Bob Dylan, a countercultural icon, harbinger of the 1960s revolution, and champion of the ordinary person, seeming to declare that a woman’s place was in the home, an idea that even the Republican Party was moving away from by the 1980s.
Luckily, Dylan was on hand at Rolling Stone to explain himself. “Actually, that line didn’t come out exactly the way I wanted it to,” he claimed in a 1984 interview. “I could have easily changed that line to make it not so overly, uh, tender, you know? But I think the concept still would have been the same.”
Explaining that specific concept, Dylan revealed that the song was not, in fact, a plea to return to the days before Betty Friedan. “You see a fine-lookin’ woman walking down the street,” he continued, “you start going, ‘Well, what are you doin’ on the street? You’re so fine. What do you need all this for?’”
An uncharacteristically clumsy line from the songwriter, Dylan can’t exactly blame anybody for misunderstanding the meaning of his lyric. Still, what’s one bad lyric in a discography of generational masterpieces? As far as mainstream misogyny in the 1980s went, Bob Dylan and his move back to secular music were the least of anybody’s concerns.
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