Worst Dylan Songs -- sez TIME Magazine

So so so wrong about "Tight Connection..." and "Wiggle Wiggle," not to mention "We Are The World" generally.

The worst song: "Rainy Day Women."

hmmm, "we are the world"? don't really think of that as a Dylan song.
"tight connection" is great, "RDW" and "Forever Young" are classics. "Wiggle Wiggle" and "90 Miles" are fun. "All The Tired Horses" is quite lovely. Guess I could vote for "They Killed Him" that one is pretty weak.

He didn't write "They Killed Him," it was Kris Kristofferson. He probably added the children's choir though.

"Tight Connection" has the classic lyrics "Close up ain't never that big" and "Never could learn to drink that blood/And call it wine./Never could learn to hold you, love,/And call you mine."

I used to hate on Rainy Day Woman but I like it now

surprised "joey" didn't make the list in honor of that epic Lester Bangs takedown

about half of Desire should have made the listt.

All and more.

digging that Up Late With Bob Dylan sleeve

happy birthday zim! 'rolling stone' did one of these too, but his top 70

http://www1.rollingstone.com/dylan/

"forever young" was #23. also, "all the tired horses" = classique

yeah that sleeve is classic. the man has style!

You crazy Alfred - Desire is one of his best records.

Went with "We Are The World"

Desire is a boring, obnoxious wreck. I give him points for the fiddle though, but not for treating Emmylou Harris like an out of tune one.

you're crazy. "isis" and "hurricane" are both awesome

"Joey," "Romance in Durango," "Mozambique," and "Oh Sister" are fucking horrible. That's half the album, and a half that's almost three hours long. "Sara" and "Isis" are the keepers.

"Rainy Day Women" is brilliant. I can't think of a better choice to lead off Blonde on Blonde.

One More Cup of Coffee!

it's no New Morning but the good songs on it are really great

xp

yeah i love the vibe of "desire"...might prefer the Live 75 versions of some of those songs, but Desire has a unique mood. I think Joey is a fun song, regardless of factual errors ...

first reactions, since i don't think i've heard most of these songs, or don't remember them

"All The Tired Horses": I keep waiting for the beat drop and Kanye verse.

"Sarah Jane": I actually downloaded Dylan since my mother-in-law wanted a copy of his "I Can't Help Falling In Love". This is silly but the covers on this album are a lot more horrific than this.

"Street Rock": past-prime Kurtis Blow track, Dylan's rapping is the best thing about it.

"Ninety Miles An Hour": not on youtube. lyrics look tame enough that I'm guessing the production is really 80s or something.

"We Are The World": phbbbbt.

"Tight Connection To My Heart": Song's overlong, and this video isn't quite up to "I Love You Suzanne" but I admire the attempt. MTV was really important at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nheBN2UWAaM

"They Killed Him": Feels a little arbitrary to include only one cover with godawful production (esp if you include "Sarah Jane" instead of another like "Spanish Is The Loving Tongue"), but since it didn't soundtrack that Alfred Molina scene in Boogie Nights it has no reason to exist.

"Forever Young": I knew Rod Stewart's rip-off first, and miss its bombast here.

"Wiggle Wiggle": Oddly enough, I think Kenny Aaronoff is making this a horrible song more than Bob is.

Dig this shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvIgb8cx6JE

"Wiggle Wiggle": Oddly enough, I think Kenny Aaronoff Don Was is making this a horrible song more than Bob is.

Are we voting for the worst song here, or the best? I will always love Sarah Jane, in all its ridiculous glory.

Only culling novelty numbers and bad production jobs for this list was pretty weak. PRETTY WEAK, Time.

there was a rad video of dylan singing "someone's got a hold of my heart" (which turned into "tight connection") during the infidels sessions that was so great. dylan's people have really cracked down on youtube, huh? lame-o.

I mean, it's a mass market magazine so it doesn't surprise me that the editors found the ugliest photos of Bob in a Miami Vice jacket and said "lol weren't the eighties horrible?"

I refuse to be complacent about Worst lists

there was a rad video of dylan singing "someone's got a hold of my heart" (which turned into "tight connection") during the infidels sessions that was so great. dylan's people have really cracked down on youtube, huh? lame-o.

Indeed. Gone too are his blinding early-80s Letterman performances, the kind that made you want to shout in Bob's face, "WHY DIDN'T YOU MAKE THE RECORD LIKE THAT?!"

are we to vote for the worst song on this list, or the best?

best: "Forever Young"
worst: I don't hate any of these. I am likeliest to skip "Rainy Day Women" but that's because I'm likelier to play Blonde On Blonde than Dylan or Self-Portrait, or to play a boot with it rather than one of the other songs on this list.

worst Dylan 60s songs would be better: I'd vote for much of The Times They Are A-Changin', plus any talking blues because once I've heard them once, the (lame) jokes have no further impact.

all the tired horses and rainy day women are amazing. fuck this shit.

dunno any of the other songs except we are the world, which is just silly

no wait, forever young, that is pretty terrible

voting "Forever Young" since it's the most full-on boring

Gone too are his blinding early-80s Letterman performances
on some other dylan thread the dude who played bass (?) in that band showed up and told some stories.

ha, desire is my favorite dylan album -- i even like 'joey.' 'sara' is probably his single most wrenching vocal performance, and 'one more cup of coffee' is perfect pensive late-night driving music.

am i wrong, or did they ignore the born-again albums entirely? those are still pretty awful. 'gotta serve somebody' is easily his worst hit.

yeah sorta surprising. though i think slow train coming is pretty great. the other two, less great.

Street-Legal has a few stinkers, especially the one that goes -

Can you cook
can you sew
can you make flowers grow
can you understand my pain?

sung as if he were held at gunpoint.

on some other dylan thread the dude who played bass (?) in that band showed up and told some stories.

Yeah, I saw that! Cool stuff. Frustrating that Dylan didn't hang onto that band.

someone probably told him they were good.

Street-Legal has a few stinkers

Yes. Changing Of The Guards and Where Are You Tonight? are two of his alltime best. The rest...not so much.

xp i dunno, i can see why -- no matter how good that letterman band sounded -- that dylan would go with tried/true stadium rockers for a big stadium tour. as cool as it would've been for him to go out with a punky/spiky LA band. believe it or not, real live to the contrary, there are some good 1984 euro tour performances.

"joey" can hang (mostly bc of that awful chorus) but the rest of Desire is good-to-great

'gotta serve somebody' is easily his worst hit.

NO

love that fuckin record

As for the Christian records, there's a song called "Something's Burning, Baby" on Empire Burlesque which boasts martial beats, Dylannettes yelling in your ear, and a synthesizer stolen from a Laura Branigan single that conjures hellfire more convincingly than anything on STC or Saved.

I wish Shot of Love was a better throwaway; he wrote better junk than "Trouble" and "Heart of Mine."

believe it or not, real live to the contrary, there are some good 1984 euro tour performances.

Seems like there should be, with that lineup. Ian McLagan's autobio All The Rage has some hilarious stories about the tour, like Dylan asking Ian for a list of songs he'd like to play, telling Ian, "Yeah, let's do those," and then never playing a single one of them for the whole tour.

"Rainy Day Women" stopped me from listening to Dylan for 20-ish years so this is an easy choice for me.

I'd vote for Ballad In Plain D as the worst Dylan song.

xxxp ha, i should read that. mclagan probably has a lot of good stories. check the barcelona 1984 date. there are some really great performances on there. does seem like dylan was trying to his best to mess with his high-priced stadium rockers on that tour -- he's definitely teaching them some of the songs onstage.

Are we supposed to vote for the best? That would be "Forever Young" obv.

thought the best geir track here would be "all the pretty horses"...pure melody. no rhythm. perfect.

funny, i kinda love "Sad Eyed" because it's so interminable. like when you say a word over and over and it starts to sound funny and lose its meaning.

Narrow away. It's not that I don't "accept" Love & Theft's awesomeness--are we talking about an album here, or the theory of evolution?--it's that it doesn't appeal to me personally, for the reason I've already indicated: I simply do not like the way he sings anymore. It doesn't matter to me if the words or the jokes are great (I'm sure they are), and it doesn't matter if you can come up with a well-crafted explanation of how that voice suits that particular set of songs. If you don't like a voice, you don't like a voice. It's music. As they saying goes, he could have sung the phone book in 1965, and there's approximately a 93% chance I would have loved it.

You know we're joking, right? If you don't like it, cool. Hyperbole is what one does on a message board.

You are a vile person, however, if you admit to loving "Joey."

Oh yeah, I know. It was the "so-called" that pressed a button.

"Just Like A Woman" is an amazing song, particularly the version on Live 1966, amongst my five favorite Dylan moments: he sounds so alien, fragile, predatory, as though his cruelty is the only thing preventing him from blowing away like a piece of trash. His pronunciation of "aches" in the chorus turns that word into onomatopoeia. And there's a lovely bridge too, which I think is pretty rare for Dylan in those days?

I don't know Dylan's records post Desire much at all, but "If Dogs Run Free" is one that I will usually skip on New Morning mostly as the scat singing doesn't really fit.

yeah, dylan singing the bridge to just like a woman on live 66 is top 10 dylan moments for me. one of those things where it's hard to believe he's standing in front of several thousand people. dude is practically whispering. in a lot of ways that acoustic set is more out there and radical than anything he and the hawks did.

yeah I love the acoustic set of that show more than just about everything. The chorus too of that take on Just Like A Woman, the twists in his voice on the last line make the cuts even worse, like he's grinding in his jab.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I had the lasagna.

Most poll results more or less make sense to me; this is the occasional #1 that really does mystify me.

yeah - only seven people, but it is funny. the lead track on what is generally considered the guy's masterpiece (at least a top five career record) is the worst song he's ever written?

And an actual #2 hit single from a moment in time when Dylan ruled the entire universe--I almost wish I were about five years older, so I could know what it felt like to turn on the radio in 1966 and hear "Rainy Day Women." It (and "Stuck Inside of Memphis," and even "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," which as I said upthread I don't care for) seem so crucial to the coloration of Blonde on Blonde--if they weren't there for balance, "Visions of Johanna" and "Sad-Eyed Lady" would be diminished.

Leopard is a highlight, such a lewd performance, like the dark comic heart of the album (even Johanna's a joke but Sad Eyed isn't so I can get thinking it a bad fit, though I still love it).

i mean, i get not liking rainy day women to some extent -- it's kind of the go-to song to make fun of dylan if you hate bob dylan. and i've probably not been crazy about it at times. but actually, getting into the nashville scene at the time has made me appreciate RDW more as an example of session dudes gone haywire, sort of the ultimate after hours nashville weird scene.
& yeah, leopard skin pillbox is great, i even love dylan's mangled opening lead guitar line. version on no direction home is out of this world, too.

sit around in a room full of boring throwback twats playing "Rainy Day Women" on a loop and giggling at how hilarious they are and you soon find out why this is the worst song ever

ha, well, yeah, that sounds bad. but couldn't that be any song?

it has to be some annoying shit about "teehee he said 'stoned'" i think

Yeah, sorry, speaking as someone who discovered Classic Dylan in '93: "Stuck Inside of Mobile..." and "I Want You" were much better introductions than fucking "Rainy Day Women."

rightfully "Tight Connection..." got no votes.

gonna bet that a lot of these got no votes because barely anyone has really heard them. rainy day women on the other hand .... everyone's heard that.

it has to be some annoying shit about "teehee he said 'stoned'" i think

Yeah...I can see where that might be annoying in 2011. But I think you've got to give the song some context; a #2 pop hit in 1966 gleefully urging everyone under a certain age to go get stoned--by someone who had quite a bit to lose at that moment, but who was way beyond such mundane calculations--to me that's insurrectionary. I'd say the same thing of Jefferson Airplane extolling everyone to "feed your head" a year later. At a certain point not too far down the road, yes, such gestures became meaningless.

I'm being hypocritical, though. On the Dylan birthday thread, I was writing about how Love & Theft doesn't do a thing for me. And that has quite a context too. If you don't like something, context ain't going to save it.

bbbut it's stoned as in shirley jjjackson

"Rainy Day Women" is the worst? Are you motherfucking kidding me? Like srsly?

Also, "what a fucking coffin" comment from upthread is fucking classic.

Wow, lot of fuckings in this post. fuckingfuckingfucking

One of the greatest things about hearing "Rainy Day Women" on the radio in '66 [I would imagine, since I was a year away from being born] would've been realizing that it opens EXACTLY like "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha" and that AM radio could find airtime for both in the same summer.

And, of course, "Mouldy Old Dough"

(although that was not the same summer, of course)

"Mouldy Old Dough" about a million times as good, of course

On the "Worst Lieutenant Pigeon songs" poll, it came last.

I've realized I just don't like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" at all.

i actually really like the version on the Live 1975 in the bootleg series..

ILM voters otm.

I suspect a lot of people were voting for the one they liked the best. I may have done so myself.

calling rainy day women the worst dylan song is so disrespectful to his catalogue

(ballad in plain e 4eva)

all the tired horses and tight connection are both really great imo

ILM voters otm.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 11 November 2017 12:28 (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Loving these Worst Songs Ever pieces btw. LOL Eagles fans.

Quinn < Stoned

All the Tired Horses is one of my top 10 Dylan songs >:(

― ◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝◦ ⃝ (Moka), miércoles 25 de mayo de 2011 22:03 (six years ago)

Still is and also Wigwam is in there. Sorry.

I'd understand if someone had Hattie Carroll as a worst..

Zanzinger wasn't his name, he didn't strike Battle with his cane or anything else, apart from that: enough happened for real that there wasn't need to change details, etc.

It isn't really a candidate for worst, but I'd understand etc..

Hattie not battle, stupid spelling corrector!

Zantzinger, fine, but he did hit her with his cane. Great song.

"hattie carroll" is the masterpiece of his protest era imo, light-years ahead of the more famous stuff

never SAT ONCE
at the head of the table
SHE JUST CLEANED UP
all the food from the table
and emptied the ashtrays
ON A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL

can't believe time magazine didn't throw in even one boomer troll pick btw. how utterly joyless. a-changin's always a good one.

"forever young"'s a feint in that direction i guess.

Tangled up in blue is just so bad

yes also Like a Rolling Stone, in fact Bob Dylan is a bad songwriter, come to think of it most canonical art is trash esp rock from 60s and 70s