Bob Dylan Song Ratings | Bob Dylan Album Ratings | Bob Dylan's New Album | Bob Dylan iTunes Albums

"Blonde On Blonde", Track #5

FURIOUSD: This song was on Rolling Stone's list of Dylan's 5 funniest songs. I have to admit, although the lyrics have a surrealism to them(as all songs in B on B do), I never found too much humour here. As Nina said, there's that wonderful, light melody and then the lyrics come in juxtaposed with such seriousness and longing. I have spent hours and hours unlocking my own personal meanings to the songs on B on B(a wonderful pursuit), but form some reason never got past the yearning openness of the chorus to see how wicked his humor might be here. Anyone got a take on this? The RS take was that it was partly funny because he almost messed up the "time was on his side" line. I don't know, I always thought the little hiccup in "Stuck Inside" was a funnier slip. Anyway, I saw Todd Snider recently(if any of you don't know him - run, and i mean run out and get East Nashville Skyline), and he told the funny story of how he just did not get Dylan at all until someone told him, "it's funny", and then he had a whole new appreciation for him. (06/02/11)

ROGER: "You damned fool, I want you. Can't you see that?" "It is just plain that I want you. There are many out there who I could settle for, but I want you. Sooooo bad". The word are just methaphor for tell this confused girl all of the trouble he is going through to tell her the plain truth. (05/20/11)

ROBERT ZIMMERMAN: nina seems to have hit the nail square on the head there; sometimes you feel like you have to say something, like you want to say something, and then discover that somebody else has says it. that's one of the reasons that i like bob dylan so much, actually, but i digress. (07/31/09)

KWK: "...and I wasn't very cute, was I?" - that's cool, isn't it? (08/26/06)

ISIS: "Silver saxophones that say I should refuse you." So many of his songs have one lyric that just makes everything else fall together. And this is the one for me. (03/16/06)

NINA: This is the song that, when I first heard it, proved my gleeful indoctrination as a citizen of Dylanland. The song begins in the most delicious lighthearted shimmering melody, oh what a treasure is in store, I was torn between wanting that Pan-pipes melody to go on forever, and finding out what story and what pictures awaited me in the lyrics--how could this story be anything but deliriously lovely, to match this tune? And the first line is "The guilty undertaker sighs"--and when I heard this glorious detonation of the music's expectations, I just howled with joy and I thought, "I"m home!" And that's how I knew I'd become a citizen of this place that's like no other. (05/20/05)