Home › Books › The Philosophy of Modern Song
The Philosophy of Modern Song
by
9/99
Critics' Rating Index
44/99
Readers' Rating Index
88/99
Scholars' Citation Index
99/99
Volume of Reviews
85/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan's first book of new writing since 2004's Chronicles: Volume One—and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan's unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work's transcendence. In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years, and like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement.
Reviews
"What does all this add up to?"
"Dylan's descriptions are tone poems, intricate evocations of a certain mood or sensation."
"Charmingly, Dylan appears to have done a great deal of research on the material covered, and maybe even breaks a little news here and there."
"The Hall of Famer riffing in prose is often as appealing — and enigmatic — as his riffing in music ..."
"Without music, his quicksilver collages of imagery, narrative, rhetoric, and wisecrack are far more prone to come off as bullshit."
"Nostalgia abounds in Bob Dylan's eclectic and eccentric collection of impressive musical appreciations ..."
"Probably he's about to release a bladderful of P.B.R."
"Though Dylan knows that 'people ask songwriters what a song means, not realizing if they had more words to explain it they would've used them in the song,' here he is quite happy to use more words, to sometimes comic effect ..."
"Analysing music is like dissecting a frog – and the frog\songs dies of it."
"Dylan's 'philosophy' is at once curious, mercurial, inconsistent and, at times, off-putting ..."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!