Can someone explain to me SPECIFICALLY what this guy innovated and what is great about him?
I'm familiar with the HE MELDED POETRY WITH ROCK meme but I can name dozens of pre-Dylan folk, blues, country songs with beautiful and poetic lyrics and then I listed to his "brilliant" records and it's "The sky's not yellow, it's chicken!" and "Johnny's in the basement, mixin' up the medicine / I'm on the pavement, thinkin' about the government!" and feel like I must be missing something.
You should listen to every single one of his studio albums multiple times.
Landon Kelly
I have with a bunch of them.
Much of first album is hard to sit with its horrendously corny faux-Woody Guthrie talky songwriting and whatever he's trying to do with his voice.
Alexander Perry
I don't know, I just like him. I have them all and while certain albums are weaker than others I've just never heard stuff from Bob Dylan that I flat out disliked. It just never happened. Modern Times is one of my favorite albums ever.
Luke Scott
Why has everything got to be about innovation? He didn't invent or do something first he just wrote folk music with a very modern slant that spoke to the era better than anyone else.
Daniel Parker
But his "modern slant" has aged horribly? People really still lsiten to his talking blues songs for fun?
Sebastian Gutierrez
I realize lyrics aren't everything, but nobody was writing lyrics as next level as he was in the 60s. Half those songs sound like something Stephen Malkmus would have written thirty years later.
Adrian Hall
>nobody was writing lyrics as next level as he was in the 60s
Such as?
Joseph Bennett
>I'm familiar with the HE MELDED POETRY WITH ROCK meme but I can name dozens of pre-Dylan folk, blues, country songs with beautiful and poetic lyrics
You just answered your own question there. Rock was the dominant form of popular music at the time. Dylan listened to those old folk, blues, and country songs, took some of those ideas and brought them to the forefront of the culture in a way that retained the timeless quality of those genres but still seemed strikingly modern.
And I'm honestly doubtful you can actually name songs prior that actually one to one match up with the kind of literary prowess Dylan had. Appalachian hillbillies and black delta bluesmen wrote some great shit, but as much as people shit on Dylan's Greenwhich village beatnik crowd, they generally were educated and brought a new level of understanding and appreciation to that music, and ultimately built upon it.
Isaiah Reed
It really sounds just like he white middle classed-up an established genre (which is another way of saying that he watered it down until it didn't wreck their delicate palates).
If you want to make that argument, then whatever, but you haven't. There is a clear demarcation between his work and the work he was influenced by and if you're not even going to try to see that then I don't know what to tell you.
And still call it "watered down" then you're a lunatic.
Carter Perez
He sure killed the harmonica as a legitimate instrument forever.
Lucas Johnson
I'm unsure whether you are memeing or not, but I think what pushed me over to the side that you are just trolling is you are going out of your way to pick work as being his best that people don't talk about nearly as much as his other stuff
Like, you're trying to ignore the examples that go against your idea
Once you become a huge Dylan fanatic as I myself once was (well, still am I guess), you'll talk about the greatness of a lot more of his work but someone like you just needs to start with the most beloved stuff that literally anyone understands or stop listening altogether because you are being willfully ignorant
Aaron Butler
He's also one of the ones who spearheaded fusing country and rock. The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Gram Parsons often get more credit for it though.
Jaxon Cook
>nobody was writing lyrics as next level as he was in the 60s Leonard Cohen's first album released in 67 blows away anything Dylan ever put to paper
Hunter Harris
the basement tapes into John Wesley Harding was pretty much the first foray into alt-country
Alexander Long
>It really sounds just like he white middle classed-up an established genre sounds like the mainstream evolution of most genres
Cameron James
this is just not true. Cohen never penned anything close to Visions of Johanna, alone.
William Harris
nah
Jordan Thomas
Cohen was a hack who never wrote anything more profound than the exact words
Adrian Allen
nah writing enigmatically can only go so far
Leo Williams
I think he's one of the best vocalists of all time even though he's a bad singer and his mysterious/cryptic qualities are addictive
Liam Ramirez
>Leonard Cohen's first album, released after Dylan's entire peak career (1962-1967) had ended Uh...Dylan had already made more classics by the time Cohen released his debut than Cohen made in his entire half-century long career, fuck Dylan made more classics in some of those individual years than Cohen did in his entire career
And it's not the same thing for the record, since Cohen was just copying the European movements of sung poetry (like chanson), Dylan did some of that but his lyrics were much less literal which is a major thing that set him apart
Tyler Morgan
>Dylan had already made more classics by the time Cohen released his debut than Cohen made in his entire half-century long career, fuck Dylan made more classics in some of those individual years than Cohen did in his entire career since when are "classics" a sign of lyrical merit? Black Dog by Led Zeppelin is a classic.
>And it's not the same thing for the record, since Cohen was just copying the European movements of sung poetry (like chanson), Dylan did some of that but his lyrics were much less literal which is a major thing that set him apart I guess this is going into personal taste territory, but incredibly vague enigmatic lyrics that really makes you think seem a bit cheap to me. Most of his songs just read to me like a barely connected ramble between verses.
Liam Nelson
As in, you (or whoever it was) is fucking retarded for trying to cite Cohen as an example of doing what Dylan was doing at the time
Music was a huge explosion of creativity in the 60's, a year can make a huge difference, so to cite someone as a contemporary who released their debut album after another artist's entire most productive period where their best known work was all released is highly retarded
Everything Dylan did past 1967 was as a legacy act, that doesn't mean it wasn't good but when people talk about Dylan as an icon and innovator, it's 1962-1967, after that he went into hiding and became FAR less productive
Cohen's debut was released in the final days of 1967, to the point it's also cited as 1968, he's not a "contemporary" and was putting out an album every few years for a short time and then barely putting stuff out at all for most of his career
At Dylan's peak he was putting out multiple albums a year AND creating over a dozen albums worth of material that was bootlegged like crazy and those bootlegs alone were often better than what anyone else was doing
So then at that point, the conversation doesn't even matter about taste because Cohen is not a contemporary so it doesn't matter which you like better, Cohen was not doing what Dylan was doing when Dylan was doing it
And again, even in context, they were drawing from entirely different movements, Cohen is a French Canadian, drawing from 50's and 60's chanson...Dylan was a flyover state American, drawing from 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's folk country blues
Comparisons between the two are retarded and generally perpetuated by people who don't understand anything about folk
Elijah Miller
>Pls no memes or shitposts. >I'm familiar with the HE MELDED POETRY WITH ROCK meme
Ethan Rogers
>But his "modern slant" has aged horribly? Are you an adult? No sane adult would make this statement and actually mean it.
Adrian Cook
>He sure killed the harmonica as a legitimate instrument forever. What?
Jaxon Peterson
He posseses a long lost virtue - sincerity. His vocal delivery only serves to convey his message even better.
Robert Rodriguez
Pack it up. Done.
Brayden Garcia
Pretty good post except it refutes everything that I want to believe so I'm gonna go ahead and tell you to go back to /r/music, cuckboy.
That doesn't even mean anything. Just because a 60s artist sounds like the 60s doesn't mean it's bad.
John Gray
>long lost virtue - sincerity Shut up grandpa, sincerity is alive and well, you're just broken and cynical especially if you think Dylan is a good example of sincerity.
Hunter Bell
I do a great impression of his singing
Nicholas Powell
Hey OP- dont think twice...its alright.
Lincoln Thomas
Who is it then? Name one.
Noah Flores
>He posseses a long lost virtue - sincerity
Lol what? That is literally the last word I would use to describe Dylan. I love him but the man was the most over posturing tryhard that ever lived. He sings in a fake accent for fuck's sake.
Matthew Cook
...
Kayden Bennett
dylon is just a poor mans hubbard
Luke Scott
>aged horribly Nice meme. Does it detract from the overall artistic merit of his work? Of course his music is going to age. Having a consistent career for 5 decades will do that.
William Allen
i wdnt call it fusing country and rock. i wdnt call john wesley hardin country and nashville i wdnt call rock. any musical impact the basement tapes were purely off the band.
Parker Gonzalez
except the band only sounds like The Band you know bc of Dylan
