Taking sides: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits vs. the Isley Brothers' "Beautiful Ballads"

dude

fucking A yeah

BTW I am not taking the piss here, I think this is a legit bizarro TS. The musicianship is a push for the most part but I go with the Isleys on that q too. Dylan's pure auteur mode; the Isleys are pop singles, "authorship" a deferred invisible question i.e. 100x more wondrous & interesting. Most importantly: Dylan writes all his own songs; the Isleys, in their selection, show fuckin' murderously good taste, and take complete ownership of every song they do, which to my mind isn't lesser than songwriting and kind of counts as the same thing in the final analysis. People compare my work to Dylan's sometimes; I could die happy if I made a record that got compared favorably to the Isley Brothers.

I've been listening to classic rock radio over and over on a clock radio, and I wish I was listening to either of these albums. "Renegade" by Styx is on right now.

I've always liked "Positively Fourth Street", and I remember a guy playing me some Isley's Atlantis song on his guitar one time when we were both going for a rest cure.

Voted Dylan, but I'm not sure what that Isley Brothers album really is.

Led Zeppelin "Traveling Riverside Blues" just came on the radio and it's fluidity feels Ernie Isley to me. Can't change my vote now.

xpost I agree with you about owning a song and choosing songs well being very important. We're all sort of fucked up on the singer writing the song if it's anything but the ditziest pop music, but the problem with that is that we don't give those who could potentially be some of our best singers a chance to do their art the way singers did in the 60s.

think I'm gonna buy that Isley's album on the strength of J0hn's rec

I could die happy if I made a record that got compared favorably to the Isley Brothers.

AMEN! (and as he'd realize himself that's no dis to Dylan)

thread-meta-ish comment: prob this would work better as a non-poll b/c the polling reduces the reasoning to a binary choice when I think it's the nuances of the comparison that are more worth exploring. But maybe you did this as a reductio against polls?

Not that last thing because BTW I am not taking the piss here, I think this is a legit bizarro TS.

I guess if you niggled it could be that last thing.

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i remember having to buy(lol) beautiful ballads just to get voyage to atlantis or one of them they tend to not put on the other isley comps, awesome. started out buying dylan by the album so that's moot, looks like a crowdpleaser tho eh

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