The Philosophy of Modern Song

Bob Dylan offers a wide-ranging collection of 66 essays, each centered on a single song by a different artist. The songs span nearly a century of popular music, from the 1920s banjo playing of Uncle Dave Macon to the 2003 recordings of Warren Zevon, and cross genres including country, blues, rock and roll, pop, soul, punk, folk, and jazz. The collection encompasses not only American music but also British and Italian songs, such as the Clash's "London Calling" and Domenico Modugno's "Volare." Dedicated to Doc Pomus, a songwriter who used a wheelchair and penned hits such as "Viva Las Vegas" and "Save the Last Dance for Me," the book is Dylan's attempt to articulate what makes certain songs endure.

Most chapters follow a two-part structure. In the first half, Dylan inhabits the song's narrative in a stream-of-consciousness style, typically written in the second person and present tense, as though the reader is the song's protagonist. In the second half, he shifts into a more discursive mode, offering essays on the artist's biography, the song's musical qualities, or a broader cultural topic the song inspires. Some chapters depart from this pattern. His essay on "Without a Song," for instance, consists entirely of a tribute to Perry Como as the antithesis of the Rat Pack, the swaggering nightclub entertainers of the 1960s; Como, Dylan argues, needed no artifice to command a stage and could out-sing anyone. His chapter on "I Got a Woman" by Ray Charles is written as a short fiction vignette about a man stuck in traffic, his desire fading into the torpor of habit.

Several chapters establish a recurring concern with displacement and longing. In his essay on "Detroit City" by Bobby Bare, Dylan inhabits the song's narrator as a prodigal son who left for the big city, found failure, and yearns to return to a family that likely no longer exists as he remembers them. He argues the song works precisely because the listener knows the narrator's nostalgia is fantasy. A similar pattern appears in his chapters on "Blue Bayou" by Roy Orbison and "Take Me from This Garden of Evil" by Jimmy Wages, a track recorded at Sun Records, the Memphis label famous for launching Elvis Presley's career, but never released. Dylan identifies the song as possibly the first gospel rockabilly record and speculates about an alternate history in which Wages, who grew up with Elvis in Tupelo, Mississippi, had moved to Memphis first and become Sun's breakout star instead.

Questions of performance and artistic identity form another major thread. Dylan praises Elvis Costello and the Attractions as superior to all their contemporaries, arguing that "Pump It Up" gave Costello license to later explore chamber music, Burt Bacharach collaborations, and orchestral work. He draws an extended comparison between Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra in the "Mack the Knife" chapter, portraying Darin as an altar boy to Sinatra's pope, a man who did not know his own father and believed his mother was his sister. In his chapter on Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti," Dylan identifies Little Richard as a preacher sounding an alarm, the master of the double entendre whose characters are transvestites, and asks whether Elvis or television variety host Ed Sullivan understood what the song was really about. His essay on Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" argues that Nelson, even more than Elvis, was the true ambassador of rock and roll because he appeared in American homes weekly through television, making the genre part of the family.

Dylan frequently uses songs as springboards for cultural and economic commentary. The chapter on Elvis Presley's "Money Honey" launches into a meditation on the nature of money, which Dylan calls an agreement, unlike art, which thrives on disagreement. He observes that the wealthy now dress in sweatsuits while the homeless have iPhones, and notes that the only thing money cannot buy is time. His essay on the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" praises songwriters Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for addressing social issues without falling into the traps of easy rhymes or laundry-list commentary, identifying the song as pre-rap. The chapter on Edwin Starr's "War" traces the history of armed conflict from seventh-century Greek city-states through the Gulf Wars, citing Marine Major General Smedley Butler's speech "War Is a Racket" and former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's moral struggles with the firebombing of Japanese cities. Dylan argues that citizens who elect leaders who send soldiers to their deaths and do nothing to stop it share responsibility for war crimes.

The book returns repeatedly to outlaws, wanderers, and reinvented identities. Dylan distinguishes between outlaws and common criminals in his chapter on "Jesse James," explaining that historically an outlaw could be killed on sight by any citizen for a bounty, a danger far removed from the modern country music or rap usage of the term. His essay on Townes Van Zandt, the songwriter behind "Pancho and Lefty," describes Van Zandt's battles with depression and addiction, and the electroshock treatments that destroyed portions of his memory, giving his songs their skeletal, detached quality. Dylan observes that the worst thing about the song's commercial success was that it put enough money in Van Zandt's pocket to poison himself.

Dylan's most sustained argument about the relationship between lyrics and music appears in the "Black Magic Woman" chapter. Drawing on essayist E. B. White's analogy that analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog, he contends that an inexplicable alchemy occurs when words are set to music. He criticizes those who read lyrics in a deadpan drone to mock their lack of depth, comparing them to the police officer who read comedian Lenny Bruce's transcripts in court and missed the essential spark of performance. In the best circumstances, Dylan argues, one plus one equals three.

Throughout the book, Dylan champions simplicity, sincerity, and mystery over technical virtuosity and overproduction. In his chapter on Hank Williams's "Your Cheatin' Heart," he argues no one comes close to Williams and criticizes modern culture for being overly fussed with, from menu items burdened with adjectives to songs about one thing with no shading or nuance. His essay on Carl Perkins's "Blue Suede Shoes" reimagines the shoes as mystical objects and traces the cultural history of footwear, while observing that Perkins was too much the country boy for the rock and roll crown, whereas Elvis had the feral whiff of danger the role required.

Several chapters address suffering, mortality, and the treatment of the elderly. In his chapter on Webb Pierce's "There Stands the Glass," Dylan reimagines the narrator as a war veteran who committed atrocities, then pivots to a lengthy profile of Nudie Cohn, the Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who created the rhinestone-studded suits worn by country music's biggest stars. His essay on John Trudell's "Doesn't Hurt Anymore" provides an account of the Santee Dakota activist's life, including the firebombing of his trailer home that killed his pregnant wife, three children, and mother-in-law, a crime for which no one was ever apprehended. Dylan contends that the mistreatment of Native Americans is the most horrid of all in American history. In the chapter on Charlie Poole's "Old and Only in the Way," he traces attitudes toward the elderly from the teachings of Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, through modern America's tendency to push senior citizens aside.

The book also examines how shared cultural experience has fragmented. In his chapter on Pete Seeger's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," Dylan argues that the most effective way to silence people today is not to remove their forum but to give everyone a separate pulpit, ensuring they hear only what they already agree with. His essay on the Drifters' "Saturday Night at the Movies" delivers an extended argument about the decline of American cinema, championing films such as Ace in the Hole, On the Waterfront, High Noon, and 12 Angry Men as containing moral codes that reached audiences more readily than Sunday sermons.

Though the book has no formal conclusion, its recurring arguments coalesce into an implicit philosophy. Dylan contends that a great song achieves a union of words and music that transcends the sum of its parts; that singers need not write a song to own it; that simplicity and mystery are more powerful than technical display; and that modern culture's drift toward niche marketing, overexplanation, and fragmented experience has diminished the power of both songs and the broader culture. The best songs, he suggests, are still being sung, in small clubs, in lonely bedrooms, and wherever the brokenhearted gather.