Dylan's WORST lyrics?

I agree. I'm going with the part in Gotta Serve Somebody where he comes out with "you may call me RJ; you may call me Ray". I was a young guy just getting into FM rock and the "classics" when that came out, and I figured that Dylan had to be totally washed up to resort to that.

 

most of the lyrics here seem pretty good to me. I'm not sure what people expect.

 

The delivery is really strong. Yes but the rest of the lines in the song are so strong that this slips by easily.

 

Joey is bloody brilliant. How anyone can think the lyrics are bad is completely beyond me, unless "bad" = "offended by."

 

Great lyrics. Dylan loves to play with rhyme.

 

They are not historically accurate but Bob never said they were. I prefer Johnny Thunders' version. 2 minutes and out.

 

Joey..................

 

Great lyrics I agree, but the melody is nonexistent.

 

That whole verse, like most of his recent work, is wholly lifted from some old blues song in the public domain. He just replaced the original name with "Alicia Keys".

 

I'm not completely sure of this, but I remember one writer claiming that the Dylan and the Dead version of Joey is the song they play over and over in hell.

 

an agenda thread.

 

Dylan's lyrics usually vary from workmanlike to brilliant. Very few are bad. I actually quite like "down every street there is a window and the window's made of glass". From the first I heard it as more about privacy and knowing your neighbor's business, not as a technical description of windows. I don't really care for "I wear dark glasses to cover my eyes, there are secrets in them that I can't disguise" although it is soon enough swallowed into the magnificent totality of that great song. There are examples where he seems to settle for obscurity, cleverness or self-referential lines and that kind of bugs me. He likes to complain about the myth but is more than happy to trade on it. I can't actually think of any examples offhand, but I know I've felt that way. Oft-times, as with the lyric I mentioned above, the weaker moments become part of an impressive whole, over time, and slide right by without bothering me at all.

 

A ton of lead doesn't wiggle either, I think that's part of the fun.

 

"an unknown hour that no one knew"

 

That's the one I thought of.

 

He saw an animal leavin’ a muddy trail
Real dirty face and a curly tail
He wasn’t too small and he wasn’t too big
“Ah, think I’ll call it a pig”

 

Many examples from 'I Shall Be Free #10' but this may be the best:

I was shadow-boxing earlier in the day
I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay
I said Fee, fie, fo, fum, Cassius Clay, here I come
26, 27, 28, 29, I’m gonna make your face look just like mine
Five, four, three, two, one, Cassius Clay you’d better run
99, 100, 101, 102, your ma won’t even recognize you
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right out of his spleen

 

Has some devoted Dylan fan ever put together one of those loving, definitive "worst of" collections, a la the Beach Boys' Endless Bummer and Sinatra's Come Suck With Me?

 

There's our proof that a great song can have a dubious lyric or two.

The one about "the child in the Chinese suit, I spoke to him, I took his flute" in I Want You isn't my favourite lyric but I love the song anyway.

Then there's Rainy Day Women #12 and #35, which I'm not so fussy about, although I certainly don't hate it.

"The pump don't work 'cause the vandal took the handle" anyone?

 

They probably accommodate individual tastes ...

 

I personally love the quoted lyrics here from slow train...with that said, my pick will be

"all the merry little elves can go hang themselves..." from Huck's Tune

 

I love that verse, and that whole song.

 

Yep. There's an early-90s compilation of his least coherent live performances, entitled "Name That Tune!"

 

Isn't it "Man Gave Names to All The Animals"?

 

This is ridiculous English.

Now your danciing child ih his Chinese suit
He spoke to me, I took his flute
No, I wasn’t very cute to him, was I?
But I did it, though, because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
And because I . . .

I want you, I want you
I want you so bad
Honey, I want you