“Still alive”: The music Bob Dylan said was most dear to him
Every artist owes it to themselves to sample everything they can get their hands on. No one becomes a legend strictly by sticking to one kind of music for the rest of their lives, and even a band like AC/DC have found ways to slip some bluesy action into their tunes rather than crushing power chords on every single track. But while he’s still known as one of the most enigmatic stars in the world, Bob Dylan always had a few genres that he would always find ways to go back to.
Then again, we’re not talking about someone who switched genres on a dime like David Bowie did. Dylan was more interested in his own brand of myth-making half the time, and while he had the title of the voice of a generation thrust upon him when he was first starting out, he did lean into it slightly, even playing with a handful of journalists who seemingly wanted to be granted the meaning of life after talking with him for a few minutes.
However, Dylan was far more interested in what he could do with a song than talking about his problems. He knew his lyric sheet was one of the few places he could be totally honest, and listening to some of his later work like Blood on the Tracks, he certainly wasn’t afraid to lay everything out as clear as day, even if it didn’t paint him or his ex-wife in the greatest light after the fact.
Dylan was hardly a pop singer, though. He shook people up with his music and made sure that every listener saw the world in a slightly different light than they did three minutes before, and while that was certainly admirable, that wasn’t what Dylan was brought up on. For him, music could move people in a different way, and the biggest names in jazz were the ones pushing their tunes forward with raw melodies.
As much as people like Bing Crosby satisfied the older generation with the kind of soft-hearted pop tunes everyone could listen to, people like Billie Holiday were interested in making people think as well. She may have had a teardrop in her voice when she sang, but outside of her brilliant range, tunes like ‘Strange Fruit’ had her opening and getting far more honest in her craft, which either turned people off or inspired the next generation behind her.
And when working on his later records like Love and Theft, Dylan found himself returning to Holiday’s music because of how much depth there was in those few minutes, saying, “All my songs, the styles I work in, were all developed before I was born. When I came into the world, that spirit of things was still very strong. Billie Holiday was still alive. All those blues singers were still alive. And that was the music that was dear to me. I was never really interested in pop music.”
Despite his aversion to the Top 40 brand of music, Dylan has always been the ambassador for that slightly underground form of expression. He knew exactly what he was doing the minute he went electric, and while some of the purists hated him for betraying their signature sound, there were a lot more ears perking up to what he had to say that probably would have never given him a second glance before.
So, while that form of bluesy singing might not have been the most accessible music in the world, it’s also not hard to identify with. Most people might like the idea of throwing music on to get away from their problems, but the best artists are the ones who are able to mirror their everyday experiences back to their audience and have them go along for the ride with them.
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