With Bob Dylan having won the Nobel for literature, the Internet is filling up with lists of his greatest songs, or snippets of the compiler's favorite lyrics. I'm a Dylan fan, and I admit to being unfamiliar with many of the items on these lists. Maybe it's the size of the sea, maybe it's a sign that some people angle for status by snubbing the stuff "everyone knows" in order to highlight their own esoteric tastes. At the risk of putting myself in this second category, one of my favorite songs, "Abandoned Love," was written in 1975 and never put on a record till it landed on the three-disc retrospective "Biograph" ten years later. You can listen to Dylan performing it in 1975 here. If you compare the lyrics he sang that night to those in the "Biograph" version of 1985, you'll see that Dylan made changes--improving ones, in my opinion.
What do I like so much about the song? When in popular music the subject is love, everything's all unicorns and kittens, unless the kitten is impaled on the unicorn's horn. Dylan, however, is for grownups. At the end, there is ambiguity, a tug of opposing emotions, ambivalence, a mix of relief and regret:
So one more time at midnight, near the wall
Take off your heavy make-up and your shawl
Won't you descend from the throne, from where you sit?
Let me feel your love one more time before I abandon it.
But, you know, I think the best songs are the ones everyone knows. No one will ever write song lyrics that sound so much like a scripture:
May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young.
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