Bob Dylan was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for music. See this if you don’t believe me. And it’s much deserved, say I.
Considering our on-going discussion of aesthetics and granted that Dylan doesn’t exactly have the best VOICE, why do you think I’m such a Bob Dylan fan who asserts that his music is objectively good?
23 comments ↓
Beacuse Bob is awesome, he’s the voice of a generation that we probably both belong to, and his lyrics are timeless
And you have great taste in music
And he’s much better than Bruce Springsteen, who whines
I lurk on your blog and enjoy it very much…and i’m looking forward to reading some of your books soon!
blessings
Barbara (from Wittenburg Trail)
“and his lyrics are timeless”
I disagree and I get a kick out of the people I know who think that his lyrics are timeless becuase they are people from the Bob Dylan generation. His lyrics say very little if anything to me.
Obviously Joe, you need to change your tastes so that you enjoy the objectively good Bob Dylan songs. :^)
Just read my new book, Dylanetics….
Well, the Pulitzer is for his poetry, right? Regardless of how he sung it, his writing is still excellent. As for timeless, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. I can say this: I am not a member of the Bob Dylan generation, but his lyrics and music speak to me.
and that should be sang. I fail…
I am not a member of the Bob Dylan generation, but he speaks to me, too. On so many topics! One reason his music is objectively good is his breadth — peace and war, love and hate, God and Satan, plugged and unplugged.
I’m not a boomer myself, and nor do I pay as much attention to lyrical content as I do to music (and the musical aspect of lyrics, as with the scansion). Given that, I don’t suppose it’s too surprising that I can’t stand Dylan. Though I have occasionally enjoyed covers of his songs which I found much more musical.
It’s not just that his voice is annoying (I like Danielson, whose singer’s voice is arguably much more annoying), it’s the manner in which it’s annoying — a manner I find uninteresting, and therefore unexcused.
All of which makes me think, again, that much argument in favor of objective beauty is really a vehicle for subjective tastes.
Well, you all are opposing your subjective tastes to my assertion that his music is objectively “good.” Remember the difference between liking something and discerning its goodness? You should be able to NOT like something, personally, but still appreciate its merits.
One classical criterion, for example, is unity, plus complexity. I would argue that Bob Dylan songs have that.
I have a lot, I say a LOT of Bob Dylan lyrics rattling around in my head. I daresay that leaves me clueless as to judging his “timeless art”, so to speak.
Sometimes he sounds like he’s just collected a bunch of cliches and strung them together. My oldest son and I often play the “dylan quote” game: what song did THIS come from??
When I listen to Dylan now, I am much fonder of his last three albums than anything he has ever done before that. He seems to have rounded into shape, having taken on folk, electric rock, blues, country, Christian music, gospel, and back to blues again. We are now enjoying a fuller, more complete Dylan than ever before. His music has become very sophisticated.
I also think that his voice is very much a part of his art. I hate Dylan covers! My thinking is: if you don’t like his voice, you don’t like Dylan. It is so often how he sings that conveys his message. And he’s the only singer/songwriter to have managed to rhyme “dog” and “level” ,as in PO BOY: “Workin’ on the mainline, working like a dog,
The game is the same it’s just upon another level…” Both words come out sounding like…”dough/levough”.
Anyway. Yeah, unity and complexity. That’s what I’m getting at!
I’d be interested in what you hear/read/understand in Dylan’s that gives it the goodness. It’s certainly not the voice, and the music itself is certainly skillfully done but hardly unique in its qualities. The only things I can see that have a possibility of being good are the lyrics.
A few of his songs touch on something particular meaningful, and there are a number that are quite true and speak well about “life, the universe and everything”. But mostly, his song lyrics were faux-profound, hardly worthy of being good in any sort of qualitative sense. Manufactured angst. Lots of alternative bands fake their profundity better than Dylan did/does.
As a singer myself, I cannot get past his awful voice. Maybe he writes good music and lyrics, but he should get someone else to sing them! Is he a Christian still?
I’m of the Dylan generation and always found it marvelous that Dylan employed the medium of popular music to deal with all the classic “big” issues - love, hate, death, war, God, justice, etc. And not in a facile way, either.
I won’t disagree that I’m arguing from subjective tastes, but then I’m suspicious of this claim that Dylan (or, frankly, any instance of art) is objectively good — a claim I will not be able to refute with arguments from objectivity. I’m not denying the existence of objective skill — though I am saying that such skill can be present in works either “good” or “bad”.
But to step back (and I’m guessing I’m fighting a losing battle here), I have to wonder why claims of objective goodness usually seem to be about things in the past, while more modern art is often derided with that same claim of objectivity as being bad. Classical art is objectively good. Modern art is objectively silly, unless it recalls the style of classical art (that is, neo-classical art from modern times). Classical architecture is good. Modern architecture is rubbish. Maybe this is a strawman, but it’s certainly the impression I get. This makes it hard for me to take claims of objectivity seriously. Where are the arguments that Philip Glass is objectively good? Or Jackson Pollack? And if not them, which recent painter, composer, or architect — that does not resort to neo-anything styling — is objectively good?
I certainly understand the difference between “liking” and “appreciating” something — my college years were full of transitions from the “it all sounds the same” derision one gives when one has not yet come to appreciate a genre to the “I get it now” thought once one has spent enough time studying it. I’m just saying that I don’t appreciate Dylan. But I doubt that comes across any less subjective. In fact, I’m not really sure how to argue against claims of objective goodness — it’s all going to sound like my opinion. You say he’s objectively good, I disagree, you say “that’s your opinion.” I mean, “unity” and “complexity” are, I would argue, subjective measures.
It’s possible I haven’t been exposed to enough Dylan to get him. I’ve certainly heard enough to know that I don’t feel like exploring his later stuff. Personally, I feel his claims of greatness are highly tied to his time — it’s more about what he did when than merely what he did. But to those of us (well, at least me) for whom that time can only be experienced by reading up on music history, a lot of the greatness is lost.
Getting back to the idea of skill vs. goodness, maybe it’s just that I’m really annoyed by the way he plays his harmonica — in my opinion, he can’t! To borrow a phrase usually tossed at modern art, “My kid could do that!”
You like Dylan because you know what its like to be stuck inside a Mobile with the Memphis blues.
Because any ballad of a thin man has to be good;
And Dylan recieved his award on Desolation Row.
His music is only better with that voice.
So, if I am understanding the argument here about “objective goodness,” complexity is a mark of what is good. Or is it “complexity within unity,” that we are talking about? Cannot something that is simple be objectively good?
It’s really quite simple: Dylan makes you think!
So does a suicide bombing put that is not objectively good.
I did not say that Dylan’s songs are objectively good, just that they make a person think, that is, “what is he *really* saying?!
A lot of his songs are typical angst, but there were also a number that definitely made me think.
They made me think “What the heck was he smoking?!”
(He has some good songs too, but most of them, well, . . . huh.)
#20 Exactly my point! One thing’s for sure, Dylan is one of a kind!
One reason Bob Dylan is objectively good is that appreciation of his music was something that Joanna and I found we had in common when we first became friends!
BTW, Dr. Veith. I’ll be installed in a church 3 or 4 hours from you on June 8th at 4:00. If you and Jacquie could make it, that’d be fantastic.
I was totally taken aback by this announcement regarding Dylan and Pulitzer. But certainly well deserved.
I don’t know if you were reporting on the news (and good news it is) or are actually a fan, but if you are then I thought I’d introduce you to my new novel, BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, which I think you’d enjoy.
It’s a murder-mystery. But not just any rock superstar is knocking on heaven’s door. The murdered rock legend is none other than Bob Dorian, an enigmatic, obtuse, inscrutable, well, you get the picture…
Suspects? Tons of them. The only problem is they’re all characters in Bob’s songs.
You can get a copy on Amazon.com or go “behind the tracks” at www.bloodonthetracksnovel.com to learn more about the book.
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