“I hear you’re the new me”: the many multitudes of new Bob Dylans
Before Bob Dylan changed the world with his music, there were some in the Greenwich Village folk scene who saw him as nothing more than another Woody Guthrie knock-off. Others said he sang like the son of Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, who himself had been called the musical son of Woody Guthrie. It wasn’t long before Dylan had struck on his own sound and inimitable style, though, and in the process, revolutionised the way that artists performed and wrote their songs.
Blending political activism and current affairs into his work alongside his poetic sensibilities, folk and blues idioms and caustic wit, Dylan went from being another Guthrie copycat to a true original in a matter of months. He inspired other artists like The Beatles, The Byrds, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and even Leonard Cohen to change their approach to songwriting, and before long, there was a long list of singers being labelled as ‘The New Dylan’.
Dylan’s impact on popular culture has been so strong that the label is still being applied to artists today, over 60 years on from his debut album. Calling an artist ‘The New Dylan’ has become such a convenient cultural short-hand for critics that readers will know in an instant what to expect from anyone who has been given the label, even though it has been applied to artists as disparate as Lou Reed, Loudon Wainwright III, John Prine, Tom Waits, Tracey Chapman, Tom Petty, Jeff Buckley, Alex Turner, Peter Doherty, Jake Bugg, Jason Isbell, Laura Marling, Destroyer, Ryan Adams, Beck, Patti Smith, Phil Ochs and Jeff Tweedy over the years.
And while there has never been a shortage of them, we haven’t ever really needed a New Dylan in the first place. We’ve still got the original, actively touring, creating, writing and performing as strongly as he ever has, night after night, even after all these years.
We contain multitudes – the New Bob Dylans:
Donovan
Releasing music at the height of Dylan’s fame, Donovan was working in a similar vein to Dylan in the mid-1960s. The two famously shared a friendly rivalry, memorably trading songs like gunfighters at a showdown in a hotel room during Dylan’s 1965 UK tour, captured by DA Pennebaker in Dont Look Back.
Some of Donovan’s early recordings, such as ‘A Song For You’, seem to reach for Dylan’s poetical style and see the Scottish singer accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica. Donovan didn’t stay in Dylan’s orbit for too long, though. When the hippy scene took over in the summer of love, Donovan jumped in headfirst, going full-on ‘Mellow Yellow’, while Dylan withdrew from the public eye and focused on recording in his basement with The Band.
Speaking to the BBC about Dylan’s influence on the occasion of his 60th birthday in 2001, Donovan said, “We all had a go at his style. I sounded like him for five minutes; others made a career of his sound. To be compared was natural, but I am not a copyist.”
Bruce Springsteen
Someone who made a career out of sounding like Dylan came a little later. While others had drawn comparisons in conversation, Bruce Springsteen was the first to be given the title of ‘The New Dylan’ by the press.
Springsteen described hearing Dylan for the first time as sounding “like somebody kicked open the door to your mind”. The influence of his idol can certainly be heard all over his debut release, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ. With many long, surreal and wordy songs, beginning with the opener ‘Blinded by the Light’, Springsteen sounded like he was picking up where Dylan left off in 1966 and taking his “thin wild mercury sound” to the max. In fact, their similarities didn’t even end with their music. Both artists had been spotted by the same talent scout, legendary A&R man John Hammond and both were signed to Columbia Records.
Dylan once quipped in 1965, “I’m glad I’m not me”, but he seemed to take notice of those who wished that they were him in the ’70s. When the two songwriters first came together backstage in New Haven, CT, ahead of a Rolling Thunder Revue show, Dylan extended his hand to Springsteen and said, “I hear you’re the new me”.
Springsteen went on to become the biggest thing in rock thanks to epic tracks like ‘Born to Run’, ‘Dancing in the Dark’, and ‘Born in the USA’ and marathon stage shows. He and Dylan maintained a mutual appreciation over the years, with Springsteen inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and sharing the stage with his hero in 1995 and 2003.
John Prine
Creem Magazine also mentioned John Prine as a disciple of Dylan. While Springsteen initially embraced the more surreal, stream-of-consciousness school of Dylanesque songwriting, John Prine was a much more mature, socially aware, and sensitive writer.
With a warm, earthy voice not dissimilar to Dylan’s Guthrie-days singing style, John Prine wrote ballads that were full of pathos, humour, sadness and reality, such as Sam Stone and Hello In There from his eponymous 1971 debut.
One of the all-time great songwriters, Prine never really put out a bad record and had a fan in Dylan, who once described his songs as “pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs.”
Conor Oberst
Even though Conor Oberst occupies a different space in the musical landscape, that hasn’t stopped the press from making comparisons. Right from his early days, Oberst was hailed as “the new Bob Dylan” while he tried to cement himself as one of the most talented lyricists of his generation.
And you can see why people would say so, while also admitting that Pagan Kennedy was probably right in her assessment. Obersts 2005 song ‘First Day of My Life’ with his band Bright Eyes might sound like a millennial update on Dylan’s timeless classics like ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ or ‘Mama, You Been on My Mind’, but it pales in comparison to those two.
Courtney Barnett
It’s not only male singer-songwriters who draw the ‘New Dylan’ tag. Noted for her incisive songwriting capabilities, Courtney Barnett has also earned comparisons to the Nobel Prize winner on multiple occasions as she has expanded upon her acclaimed discography.
With her word-heavy songs, which are rich with rhyme, double meanings, social commentary, and a powerful outside-looking-in persona, Barnett can also, at times, match Dylan’s mid-1960s sneer in her vocal performances. While her music may not sound too much like his, her wordplay and ingenuity with her lyrics make her a worthy successor to the throne.
Taylor Swift
One of the more controversial artists to have been compared to the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter, Taylor Swift is unarguably the biggest artist of her time. So, while some may not like it, she is clearly the voice of her generation.
Writing for Forbes in 2024, Rob Salkowitz caused a stir online when comparing Swift’s latest release, The Tortured Poets Department, with Dylan’s seminal Blood on the Tracks. It’s a hard argument to make, and Tortured Poets, whilst excellent at times, on the whole feels too bloated with clunky lines and filler songs to truly deserve the comparison, but there are plenty of elements of their careers where Dylan and Swift do have similarities.
Ahead of his comeback tour in 1974, a reported 8% of the total American population applied for tickets to see Dylan perform. Taylor Swift is a huge live draw, as well, with her triumphant Eras Tour setting box office records wherever it went. Both artists have deeply private personal lives and so have carefully managed their public personas, whilst still encouraging the ‘lore’ that surrounds them to grow. Both artists have a habit of leaving hidden Easter eggs in their work for fans to find and pore over. Both artists changed the landscape of popular music in their time.
And now, one of the things that critics are always on the lookout for is not just ‘The New Bob Dylan’, but ‘The New Taylor Swift’.
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