Sunday, January 20, 2013

Best New Song by an Artist Named Bob

Nominations



Tin Angel
On the album "Tempest" by Bob Dylan

Roll on John
On the Album "Tempest" by Bob Dylan

Tempest
On the Album "Tempest" by Bob Dylan


And the winner is...

Tempest by Bob Dylan

Oh, it's easy to take the mickey out of Dylan. Old guy with a hoarse voice singing songs about being an old guy with a hoarse voice — who the hell does he think he is, he should be having a face lift, pretending he's still seventeen and and going "na-na-na-na-na-na" outside Buckingham Palace like any normal legend.

Last year, a kitsch rendering of the Little Drummer Boy, this year, a fantastically complex ballad about the sinking of the Titanic, cryptic, baffling, densely allusive; gargled out in a stripped back voice that came from the beginning of the world and will go on forever.

The Captain barely breathing
Kneeling at the wheel
Above him and beneath him
Fifty thousand tons of steel
....
In the dark illumination
He remembered bygone years
He read the Book of Revelation
And he filled his cup with tears.


Tempest is by no mean the best thing Bob Dylan has ever done. It is, however, the best thing he has done since Tangled Up in Blue.

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