Submitted by big_macaroons t3_z0ioem in todayilearned
Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan were sitting in a cafe in Paris. Dylan asks Cohen, "how long did it take you to write Hallelujah?"
"Seven years," said Cohen. "How long did it take you to write Like a Woman?"
"About fifteen minutes."
And it shows. Hallelujah is far superior. Dylan doesn't even write songs he just rambles on and on. Overrated.
Both are great! John Mellancamp is overrated. Michael Bolton is overrated. Dylan was one of the earliest mainstream weirdo musicians who inspired a whole decade of music.
His songs were so well liked that they were hits for people just covering them (the byrds, Joan baez, Manfred mann). Something that's overrated lacks quality and merit but is somehow popular (creed, island boys, dj khaled).
Let me guess, you have some real hot takes on The Beatles too.
Thank you! Your feedback is enjoyed.
I'm shillin for Dylan. I understand not liking Bob Dylan, not everything the man does is good or listenable, but terms like overrated just don't work on an artistic and media presence of his level.
There's a reason he is so highly regarded, he developed on a folk sound that already existed and brought it to a level that people hadn't seen before. It was really insane and unheard of for a person to just bang on a guitar saying the stuff he was saying. He was combining beat-poet lyricism with rambling rock and roll all with a nutty folk troubadour/second coming of Woody Guthrie presentation. It GREATLY affected many young people and changed the way rock music was made.
Think about it, rock music went from shit like "rock around the clock" and "the monster mash" to All along the Watchtower in less than a decade.
I get what you're saying but you're cherry-picking songs for comparison here. Sugar, Sugar by the Archies came out the year after All Along the Watchtower. It's not like Dylan overturned the entire pop engine; yes he was inspirational and wrote amazing lyrics, but shitty songwriting has and will continue to be popular as well.
Definitely. He didn't single handedly innovate in a vacuum for sure.
BUT my point was more a direct answer to the sentiment that Dylan is "overrated", not that he necessarily invented all modern music. I was talking about his impact specifically. Which was huge.
I like Bob Dylan and even know a few of his songs and play them on the ol guitar. As far as your reference goes I believe Elvis played a larger role in the evolution of that progression than Dylan. Even if all along the watchtower is one of my favorite songs still doesn't hold a candle to Hallelujah.
Elvis was a very historically important late 50s rock and roll performer and dancer who sang COVER songs. He was more comparable to Michael Jackson.
Elvis also colluded with the Nixon administration to spread misinformation about Marijuana usage and communism to stop kids from listening to bands like The Beatles and Bob Dylan because they were a threat to his waining popularity in the mid 60s (even though he himself was a drug abuser and died from being gluttonous with food and drugs).
Songwriting is a different ballgame. Also you're not really bringing anything to the table by mentioning Elvis. He has nothing to do with Bob Dylans impact specifically which is what I was explaining.
You basically took your chess piece off the board and put rhinestones and a little pompadour wig on it and yelled checkmate. Some advice for you is to stop comparing artists. It's a really tired argument to say "THIS song is so much BETTER than THAT one". You're limiting yourself by not viewing art objectively and looking at it with more of a sports mindset of who is "better" than who.
Why do you keep editing you replies to make it seem like you know what you're talking about? Are you googling things to insert into your arguments to make yourself seem more knowledgeable than you actually are?
LOL no I obsessively fix and add stuff. This is offhand shit I know because I admittedly spent more time reading about music history than learning a skill. I see why you'd think that but I'm just a big editor.
Do you play any instruments? Or write songs yourself? I had a garage band for a time. It was fun
Ah yeah. I did. I want to get back into it. The last time we toured around I was 29 and it was right before covid and now I'm almost in my mid 30s.
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Also is this an accusation or a question? You're all over the place. In one post Bob Dylan is below you and "just rambles" and in another you're bragging that you can play his music on guitar.
I'm not trying to win an argument I'm simply saying although I enjoy Bob Dylan he is overrated. I was attempting to find common ground and letting you know I'm not anti Dylan. I just don't like the rambling songs...and he does ramble. I'm only aware of a few of his songs that tell an actual story. Maybe you could share a song or two that isn't pretentious rambling.
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It's just comparison is tough! With Cohen for example I'm pretty sure artists like Dylan, with their awkward singing and weaving lyrics, inspired him personally to move towards music after being a published poet.
It's just i feel dylans work begat Cohens work, and while it's not illegal to compare I tend to try to separate even super similar artists on their own merits if that makes sense.
That's interesting and I didn't know that. I myself started with poetry and then moved to song writing and then once no one wanted to play my songs I learned how to play guitar so I could sing them myself. Since I couldn't sing for shit and preferred acoustic I naturally got into Dylan. I actually started as a rapper but that's another story lmao. From Tupac to Bob Dylan. Then came religion and my fall from religion or leaving religion. So hallelujah has taken on deeper more symbolic meaning in my life. I've kinda lived it in a sense. Music just takes a lot and doesn't give much back, at least the way I was doing it. Which was probably wrong and why I stopped. There are songs that come inspired in ten or fifteen minutes and that's cool but I do respect someone sticking with a song and fine tuning it until it is perfect or as close to perfect as they can get. I'm sure both artist have experienced both.
It's always that need to get the songs out that leads to the singing. I wanted to "be in a band" since I could remember. It's tough when there's diminishing returns and you slowly stop getting back what you're putting in. I totally understand quitting. I'm just hoping to maybe end up like Guided By Voices or something and make something decent in my mid 30s maybe with my wife singing or something lol. I sang best with a pitchy sorta of high voice and age sorta changed it so I kind of have to redevelop all that stuff.
It's hard. You want to do it and get in front of people with your songs more than anything but time goes fast and regular jobs just absorb you.
Pretentious is tough because I think the pretentiousness comes more from the art assuming it's connecting with you or blowing your mind vs the art just being itself. I find Dylan to be unpretentious in that you are sort of tuning into the world of Bob Dylan when you're listening, he's not really telling you he's great or that he's making anthems, the songs BECAME that with their impact.
Pretentious, to me personally is more like "we built this city" by Starship. The shitty unclear direction of the lyrics with lines like "corporation names" rhymed with "corporation names", the phony forced anthemic production, the song crosses its arms at you and says "Isn't this great? Aren't we speaking directly to you right now!?"
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Interesting comparison. Just because someone writes a lot of songs doesn't make them a great songwriter. And most of Dylan's stuff was just him rambling and talking about stuff. And it's boring. Basically AM radio. Talk Radio. He had some good songs yes. Again I enjoy Bob Dylan's few good songs. But overall...eh... overrated. If you're at a part are you pulling out Bob Dylan or MJ and Elvis?
Who said anything about writing a lot of songs? I feel like you know your argument has no gas and you're just being a contrarian at this point.
Who's to say that more popular party music is automatically better? Most people at a party want to listen to fun popular songs, obviously mj and Elvis work better as party music for a general audience, but if those are the metrics you are using then why are we even having this discussion?
You're trying to discredit my argument by presenting an argument that is weak. "Whats better for a party" or whats more popular wasn't what the discussion was about and you're trying to pivot and accusing me of googling things. Terrible.
This conversation isn't even cohesive or coherent anymore bc you keep editing your post instead of just adding replies. Nonetheless my opinion is still my opinion. You've not offered any songs comparable to the depth or insight of hallelujah which was the starting point of all this.
I didn't edit this one. I got embarrassed after the first time and stopped editing.
But depth and insight changes! Those things are fluid. There may be a time in your life where that specific song doesn't click the way something else does.
How do we measure insight and depth.
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