Dylan's WORST lyrics?

Sacred heart.....


"
He looks so truthful, is this how he feels
Trying to peel the moon and expose it
With his businesslike anger and his bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye he just grows it
He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk
Or pick it up after he throws it

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won’t ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to"

 

Or brilliant.

 

Man gave names is meant to be child-like. That is what gives the song its power. You don't have to like it but it's missing the point to list it as "bad".

Hey, weren't we going to cut down on these negative threads?

Tim

 

This whole thread is about missing the point. The idea that a song-writer enjoys being adventurous with rhyme, doesn't use standard grammar, and doesn't write in prose seems to completely go over the head of some folks.

 

Yes, my mistake.

 

Nothing wrong with anything that's been quoted here as far as I'm concerned. I can "hear" them sung.
But the main thing is : expect poetry from any lyricist and you're bound to be annoyed and disappointed. Poetry and lyrics are NOT the same thing, don't work the same way and don't exist for the same reason. Don't expect a songwriter to know a thing about poetry, or a poet a thing about music, they're natural enemies.
Typing up a couple of lines that were never meant to exist without music and complaining about them seems a bit silly, to be honest. Why not complain about Tarantula instead ?

 

"My friend Billy,
had a 10 foot willy,
and he showed it to the girl next door.
She thought it was a snake,
so she hit it with a rake,
and now it's only 5 foot 4."

Not his strongest lyrics, but better than his cringeworthy 'Ching Chong Chinaman', what was he thinking?

 

From the highly lauded Blonde on Blonde: "She just smoked my eyelids and punched my cigarette." Some of his surreal lyrics are great, but that particular image just never made it for me.

 

You speak to me in sign language
And i'm eating a sandwich

It is so bad he gave it to Clapton!

 

That one was deliberately bad. So bad it's hilarious.

 

Weird. Most of these lyrics are pretty much the kind of lyrics that drew me to Dylan--it's like he is being castigated for taking risks. Now, if someone would have cited: "I'll remember you, when I forgotten all the rest/You to me were true, you to me were the best" I might just take your point--but even there, the musical context kind of saves it.

 

As I'm eating a sandwich
In a small cafe
At a quarter to three

This must be a top contender. Always laugh when listening to this song.
He gave a couple of other below-par songs to Clapton also.

 

This is all relative, I don't think anyone can argue even if written firmly tongue in cheek Wiggle, Wiggle has some pretty poor lyrics and there are other examples of where Dylan wasn't firing on all cylinders. However, IMHO Dylan is the greatest lyricist of the 20th century. Sometimes his lyrics are deliberately oblique, sometimes he is wilfully amusing / daft / silly and there are many examples where the lyrics are confusing or don't make grammatical sense. But the imagery they conjure up, the feelings in each individual that are generated when listening to them in the context of the song itself are what it is all about. Dylan at his best can take you into another world, not many can do that. Certainly not as regularly as Dylan can.
Also even when not at his best his lyrics are still pretty good compared to the rest. Sure from time to time he wrote some lyrics that when compared to his other work look pretty poor but for what he has achieved over the last 50 years I think he gets a free pass there. After all he set the bar pretty high for himself very early on in his career.
There is another thread at the moment with great opening lines to songs and Dylan will be figuring very highly in that one. These aren't opening lines but are some of my favourite lyrics by Dylan which I think he was directing at the money men, taking their cut and the media / people who were delving into his personal life etc.

'Business they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of them know along the line
what any of it is worth'

The beauty of Dylan's best writing is everyone will have their own interpratation of what the above means and will be different to what I think. And to me that is what great lyrics do. But not even Dylan can maintain that level all the time so there will be the occasional 'Wiggle, Wiggle' along the way.

I take it the OP started this as a bit of a laugh, I could be wrong there and there may well have been another agenda, but that is the spirit I took it in when replying and will continue to follow it in that spirit. I just felt it important to also show what an exceptional lyric writer the man is and when the term genius get's handed out so frequently these days I personally think Dylan qualifies for that status.

 

Wiggle, Wiggle, Wiggle like a plate of milk....

Actually, I think Wiggle, Wiggle is fantastic except for the fact that it is way too short. He should have cut SRV loose on that and made it a 6 minute track. Same with God Knows. I saw a few amazing live performances of Wiggle, Wiggle that had a hard-rocking punk edge to them. Track down a live performance and you'll see what I mean.

 

The man known as Slash solos on Wiggle Wiggle at the very end, and then the track fades out. Just couldn't cut it with Bob.

 

"winterlude, this dude thinks you're fine"

 

And he sings it in his most perfectly ridiculous Floyd the Barber voice. Great song, great performance.

 

What's wrong with it? Just curious.

 

I always thought that line was a reference to that very popular commercial where the guy goes "But you don't have to call me Johnson...." that was in heavy rotation in the late 70s on all the networks (all three of them lol).....I do not even remember the product but I remember the commercial. I always thought that line worked because the reference is so obvious to anyone in 1979....

you have to look at Bob on Slow Train as one would look at an wandering fire and brimstone preacher who has to keep moving on before the current small town he is visiting gets tired of him.....anyone who grew up in a fundamentalist Southern Baptists culture knows what I am talking about.

 

I will forgive Bob for any bad line...he gave us Blonde On Blonde....

 

Here's that guy…

 

Yes, I knew at the time "RJ" was referencing the then-current commercial. And it's not really a "bad" lyric even; I'm not going to call any Dylan lyric a bad one (even stuff that eludes me, like Wiggle Wiggle). That line just sounded too tossed-off, hurried, whatever in 1979, but he's Dylan and I'm not.

 

I love that song! I must admit, every time I hear it I crack up hearing them sing "as I'm eating a sandwhich..." but man I love the sound, and there is just something very funny about that line to me that makes me enjoy it more

 

You're missing the point of that one. He's not suggesting Bruce would ever have done those things, or that anyone thinks he would have. He's drawing a contrast between truly evil behavior and the things Bruce did, in order to point out how silly it was that Bruce had so many problems with the law. In other words: "Isn't it ridiculous how much effort was put into arresting and charging Bruce for relatively minor things that didn't hurt anyone? He never did anything truly evil that would warrant the level of legal harassment he received." True, the image of infant decapitation is bizarre and completely out of left field (I don't think there was any huge outbreak of baby killing in the 60s in America). But bizarre non sequiturs are sometimes what makes Dylan interesting. The bizarreness of some of the lyrics of that song prevent it from lapsing into a cliched, sentimental tribute it would be otherwise.

 

"Joey" is a bad song from every angle -lyrically, musically and morally. And its length just exacerbates the offense. What was he thinking?