Not many ....if any ...better than Bob at wordsmithing ......a few in his league ....one better and a vastly superior musician and singer....Joni https://t.co/I356Od8nlb
— David Crosby (@thedavidcrosby) December 14, 2018
December 14, 2018
Better than Bob Dylan?
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Was Joni a better musician/singer? Sure... but she (and all the other "better" musicians) tapped out decades ago. Dylan is still chugging along and people are still covering his songs...saw an Adele video of "make you feel my love" last night.
And Dylan is very underrated as a performer. Many of his songs are not easy to sing effectively.
Nicer to look at, too.
Depends on how you define being a "better musician".
There's loads of people who were/are contemporaries of Bob and Joni who are objectively superior musicians from a technical standpoint. Certainly there were plenty of classical and Jjzz musicians with far more "chops", general knowledge of music theory, technical skill with their instruments. Things like song writing and lyric writing are far more subjective obviously. Then there's importance and influence. There's a whole bunch of ways to define "better".
I'd put Van Morrison up against any of them.
Saying someone is a better singer than Dylan is a back-handed compliment.
I always thought Dylan was overrated. But...as I get older I find that I like Dylan more and more. Maybe I'm changing or just maybe it just took me longer to let it penetrate. I always had a problem listening to his vocals.
To me- both Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon are the two best songwriters of our generation. There are other greats, but those two crossed multiple musical styles, wrote a litany of different songs, are both great wordsmiths, and could sing. I think they are far and away the best.
Paul Simon and Dylan were the two best songwriters of that generation, and they haven't been matched by anyone following them, either. Mitchell is just a level below them.
Musically, the Bee Gees exceeded just about everybody in songwriting. Just listen to ”Blue Island.” Facts are facts, people. Deal with it.
Lyrics-wise, Mark Knopfler is good, Paul Simon food, but none exceeded John Lennon. Again, facts are stubborn things. Deal with it, people.
And in music news, number one on the college charts this summer was 'Better than Ezra'. And at number two: 'Ezra'.
Many of his songs are not easy to sing effectively
Jimi Hendrix and Sheryl Crow did his stuff well I thought.
@M. Jordan. Didn't you mean to say: "Everyone has there own opinion. To each their own."?
Lennon/McCarthy was at that level, but individually not in my opinion.
I wanna be Bob Dylan
Mr Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky
When everybody love you
Oh! Son, that's just about as funky as you can be
Mr Jones and me
Starin' at the video
When I look at the television, I wanna see me
Staring right back at me
We all wanna be big stars
But we don't know why, and we don't know how
But when everybody loves me
I'm wanna be just about as happy as I can be
Mr Jones and me
We're gonna be big stars
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain...
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me
Yoko and me
And that's reality
Keith Richards Reveals He’s Cut Back on Drinking
I think Cole Porter and Irving Berlin were fortunate to live in an era when songwriters weren't expected to be the definitive interpreters of their own music. Also, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin were allowed to farm out the lyrics to their melodies. Hoagy Carmichael was the only singer/songwriter from that era who could do it all--music, lyrics, performance, and style to match the preceding--but no one regarded him as a saint/prophet/genius.
Never got the appeal of Dylan... And as far as I know, he never frolicked on frozen Lake Mendota on skates.
@Humperdinck
Yes.
Anybody who uses "wordsmith' for 'poet' or lyricist' is in no position to judge.
*their
Never got the appeal of Dylan... And as far as I know, he never frolicked on frozen Lake Mendota on skates.
No, but he did write "Winterlude". Best frolicking winter song.
Don't really know music. A while back I was surprised of the number of songs written by Willie Nelson, that other artists took to the charts. Not sure where Willie falls in with these other writers.
I'll never forget that scene in "Don't Look Back" where Bob appears to open-mindedly listen as Donovan plays his cute little Donovan song and then pauses a moment and then straight up obliterates Donovan off the face of the planet by playing one of his own songs.
It was one of the coldest, cruelest things I've ever witnessed. If I were Donovan I'd have killed myself that night.
Dylan has always had a genius problem, where he can't relate properly to anyone less intelligent than him in certain areas, so his default mode of interacting with ordinary people appears like trolling. I actually noticed Angel Olsen doing it first, and once I understood what she was doing, what Dylan does, especially in that film, made much more sense.
"...Lyrics-wise, Mark Knopfler is good, Paul Simon food, but none exceeded John Lennon."
Uhhhh.
Even if you (mercifully) take "Imagine" off the table, Lennon's lyrics are still shy of the top two tiers.
How to write a Lennon song lyric:
• tie words rhythmically together generously from the Lewis Carroll thesaurus;
• tie words rhythmically together stridently from the sixties hippie-marxist slogan book;
• tie words rhythmically together mawkishly and expound upon the wonders of Yoko.
In short: his best lyric was for the song "Revolution Number Nine."
I am Laslo.
I always confused Joni with Judy Collins. I wonder if David is doing that now.
Leonard Cohen, shortly before he passed away, said the giving Dylan the Nobel Prize was "like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain."
All his peers know that. Crosby likes being provocative. Perhaps he wants to give Joni a boost to give her the recognition that she deserves. Steve Earle tried doing that for his friend Townes Van Zandt by proclaiming that he was "the best songwriter in the whole world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” Earle disavowed that hyperbole in later interviews:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/arts/music/10decurtis.html
Dylan could have used a better editor - some good material, but a bit of a wheat for the chaff issue for me.
I always feel the idea of a universal ranking that works for everyone is flawed. We're all different people and have different life experiences and have heard different musics over the course of our lives, meaning we all have a different context for any particular music we hear. The notion that one songwriter/composer is going to hit everyone in the same way just doesn't make sense. Even the same person might react differently to the same piece of music at different points of their life.
That should have read Lennon/McCartney. I had just read an essay by Andy McCarthy, and had it stuck in my mind.
Who was the better painter?
Joni
Or Bob
I would say Joni is better technically, but Bob has a wider range and is much more interesting.
was / is
Lyle,
Well, that is of course true. However, you can still rank them in an ideal world by simply polling people. I think Dylan and Simon would come out on top in a such poll.
Paul Simon. Just saying...
Carole King was a better songwriter than both Mitchell and Dylan, and she was effective at singing her songs also.
Amexpat - Love the Leonard Cohen quote. There are musicians whose music is great and we listen to anyway even though their lyrics are meaningless/written in bed on a Sat morning (Neil Young!). But not sure LC or BD would have had success w/o the great lyrics.
I love Bob Dylan and have since I was about 17 or so. I have seen him numerous times through the years. He is usually not very good in concert. The best time I saw him was around 2006 or so in Jackson, TN in a minor league baseball stadium. Willie Nelson and friends fronted and they were great, as well. He was also good at the Ryman when Elvis Costello showed up, unbilled, and did a set and Jack White walked on and did Meet Me in the Morning with Dylan. Having said all that, I bought a Joni Mitchell album before I could drive and before I got into Bob. It was The Hissing of Summer Lawns, which I still have, but Blue is my favorite album of all time by anyone and I have no problem with David Crosby's assertion especially if confined to a specific time. As someone else mentioned, Dylan's whole body of work is vastly superior. Paul Simon is pretty damn good, as well. Simon has comparable longevity.
My own list, since we're essentially talking rock/pop/influential:
Songwriting: Dylan/Lennon-McCartney/Simon/Springsteen
Producer: Geo Martin/Spector/Brian Wilson
Featured Musicians: Jeff Beck/Hendrix/Slowhand/Funk Brothers/Wrecking Crew
Special Mention: Ry Cooder/Mike Bloomfield (Albert's Shuffle)
For a pre-Beatle generation, Dylan towers above all
At some point Dylan lost his chops. Now he is unlistenable. His stuff has not aged well either.
Never got the appeal of any of 'em. A Dylan song came on the radio the other day and I had to switch channels it grated on my ears so much.
I've been listening to a lot of 1970s funk/soul lately, so much so that I think Amazon Prime Music thinks I'm a black dude instead of a lilly white midwestern boy.
Stephen Foster signed over the rights to Oh Susanna for ten dollars. To be fair, ten dollars back in those days paid for a three day drunk which was his immediate priority, but, still, that's not such a lucrative return on his talent..........Singer/Songwriters of the Dylan, McCartney era were fortunate to be alive at such a time. In terms if money, respect, and groupies it was the very best era to be alive. Mozart was known as the greatest musician/composer of his era. He made a living, but it wasn't anything spectacular. I believe talented jewelers and silversmiths made more money and probably got hotter chicks.......Music is all about finding the melody to fit the pulse and stops of time. Dylan and McCartney found the crescendo.
Gordon Lightfoot
Joni certainly was a better musician in the technical sense, when she was at the peak of her powers.
That said, I saw Dylan play a few weeks ago and he was absolutely great.
Joni and Prince are/were the two finest all-around musicians--singers, songwriters, instrumentalists--of the rock era. I've hated Dylan's voice since Rainy Day Women, so to my mind he's not even in contention.
Joni used those exotic tunings that David Crosby cooked up because she had no chops, but she ran with them.
If you can't listen to the one you love, love the one you're listening to.
'll never forget that scene in "Don't Look Back" ...
He was asked at a press conference: Do you think of yourself primarily as a singer or a poet?
"Oh, I think of myself more as a song and dance man, y’know."
This debate reminds me of Beatles vs. Rolling Stones. Clearly, the Stones are better.
I'm not sure, but I believe that Paul MvCartney is the richest musician who has ever lived or who will ever live. There is no higher honor that can be granted in this sub lunar world. Bowie did okay too, but he died which takes all the fun out of being rich......Dylan gets a lot more veneration and respect, but McCartney is the billionaire.
Paul McCartney is a genius song writer too, but he does not match Dylan's talents.
Joni kind of peaked at BLUE. Dylan has dozens of songs that are immediately recognizable and are covered by lots of top artists. The Rolling Stones as a group have also produced a huge book of songs that are classic. Ditto Carole King.
How to write a Lennon song lyric:
In his own write: "Say what you mean, make it rhyme, and put it to a backbeat".
Van Morrison clearly worships Dylan and often sang "Just Like A Woman" & "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" in concert. Or did. At some point he realized he was going to die someday despite all the Irish mysticism and now he seems to think he's an old black blues guy..
Hi, Yancey - It may just be semantics on my part. I'm a music therapist and over the years have learned that something I might think of as banal can be deeply life enriching for someone else. If a poll says someone is best - what is it saying about the people that artist doesn't reach? And then there's the phenomenon of someone like Bach being largely dismissed as a fuddy duddy until Mendelssohn came along. I'm fine with saying who is winning the popularity contest - it's the "better than" that always triggers me.
(eaglebeak)
Well, Bob Dylan is a genius and Joni Mitchell is not, so there's that.
In my college years, Bob Dylan was THE voice. Joni Mitchell--not.
It's 50 years later, and it's a comparison I find absurd.
@Molly - In my day, if you went to a lady's house for a frolic, you were gonna be listening to some Joni Mitchell.
A nice discussion for a lazy Friday afternoon. There is not one, rather there are many good and great ones. Lots of us agree who is on the list, we quibble about the number and the order. List for me the objective criteria for assessing song writing ability and I'll give you my list in order from 1 to 10.
They're both great lyricists. The first verse of Highway 61 Revisited is brilliant and better than any blues or rock song before or after it, except maybe some Leadbelly. However, the first verse of Both Sides Now is also brilliant. "Bows and flows of angel hair and ice-cream castles in the air" may be one of the most evocative descriptions I've ever heard and is comparable to Rodgers & Hammerstein's best lyrics ("there's a bright golden haze on the meadow").
I'm going to defer to Crosby on musicianship. He would know - he's an amazing musician.
Ray Davies. As good as Simon or Mitchell.
Clearly you all don't know (or care to acknowledge) the song writing genius of Billy Gibbons:
She's got legs, she knows how to use them
She never begs, she knows how to choose them
She's holdin' leg wonderin' how to feel them
Would you get behind them if you could only find them?
She's my baby, she's my baby
Yeah, it's alright
She's got hair down to her fanny
She's kinda jet set, try undo her panties
Everytime she's dancin' she knows what to do
Everybody wants to see if she can use it
She's so fine, she's all mine
Girl, you got it right
Yes! I have been waiting for something with the Bob Dylan tag to post this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8ZFGQ4sC8M
But for perfect clarity about the meaning of life, they're all beat by Al Yankovich.
"Dare to Be Stupid" is his "Blowing in the Wind." His "Imagine."
Joni Mitchell's "Court and Spark, ranks with "Rubber Soul" and Donald Fagen's "The Nightfly" as one of the most perfectly constructed albums of songs. That said, sixties singer-songwriters Laura Nyro and Jimmy Webb produced a string of songs covered by top vocalists such as Barbara Streisand, Glenn Campbell, Art Garfunkel,The Fifth Dimension, Three Dog Night,etc. Two truly important, if not well known, writers.
Cole Porter.
Lennon & McCartney?
I'm with Molly on this one. Blood on the Tracks, Street Legal and Blond on Blond are in a league of their own.
IMHO, Joni was the Taylor Swift of the 60's...mostly about poor relationship choices...which is evocative when one is in their 20s & early 30's...but doesn't mean much in one's 60s & 70s....unless one is still making poor choices...which one might say one is still tangled up in blue.
I told you Crosby was a poisonous little toad.
Clearly you all don't know (or care to acknowledge) the song writing genius of Billy Gibbons.
Tube Snake Boogie
I got a girl she lives on the hill
She won't do it but her sister will
When she boogie
She do the tube snake boogie
Boogie, little baby
Boogie-woogie all night long
While you all were listening to that pretentious critical-favorites shit in the 60s and 70s, Real America was feelin' the lyrics of the Three Bs and an F:
Brewer. Bunnell. Beckley. Farmer.
We're Coming To Your Town. Down the Ventura Highway. With Sister Golden Hair. On a Horse with No Name. Because I'm Your Motherfucking Captain.
I am Laslo.
And if you want the REAL Lyrical Poet of 70s Heartland America, then three words for you:
Bob Motherfucking Seger.
I am Laslo.
Great discussion. To a large extent I'm with Jupiter "
If you can't listen to the one you love, love the one you're listening to.". All these 'best of' discussions boil down to who's my favorite today, because I may change my mind tomorrow. That said, I loved Joni Mitchell before I learned to appreciate Dylan. I think 'Song for Sharon' is the best thing she ever wrote on her best album (Heijra). But then there's Van Morrison ("we are the wild children, born 1945, when all the soldiers came marching back, with love looks in their eyes") Paul Simon, somedays I'll argue he's the best. Rodney Crowell belongs in this discussion, too (Ashes by Now, I Don't Have to Crawl).
List for me the objective criteria for assessing song writing ability and I'll give you my list in order from 1 to 10.
You can't be completely objective, but there are some measurable criteria.
1. Impact on other musicians and society at large. You can look to covers versions for the first and references to an artist work in high and low culture for the second.
2. Durability: How well do the songs hold up years after they've been released
3. Quality as determined by peers
4. Quantity of quality by looking at the top 100 songs of a song writer
5. Diversity of styles
6. Originality
Using these criteria, I see Bob bettering Joni for #1,3,4 & 5. Numbers 2&6 are more or less a tie.
Only Lennon & McCartney are in Dylan's league using these criteria.
My vote for writer is Jim Morrison. Crystal Ship is pure genius. Best musician would have to be the greatly underappreciated Roy Buchanon.
“From the era” is perhaps a bit vague but does not limit the genre. I would nominate:
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Dolly Parton
Johnny Cash
Brian Wilson
Freddie Mercury
Neil Young
Aretha Franklin
Townes Van Zandt
And let's not forget Antonio Carlos Jobim
Joni is absolutely great. So is Dylan, but Crosby is right that she’s a ‘better ‘ musician in that her songs are far more interesting musically.
Her lyrics are top-notch and unique expressions that give great insight. She paints pictures with words and colors with sounds and her melodies convey emotions that I didn’t know existed.
Many comments above reveal lack of knowledge of Joni’s work and simplistic interpretations of this level of songwriting.
Carol King? Van Morrison? Certainly great songwriters but not at the level of Joni who is in a class by herself. So is Dylan, which is why these kind of comparisons are absurd. Art is not sport. It’s not a competition.
From the GREAT album Hejira:
Furry Sings the Blues
Old Beale Street is coming down
Sweeties' Snack Bar, boarded up now
And Eagles The Tailor and the Shine Boy's gone
Faded out with ragtime blues
Handy's cast in bronze
And he's standing in a little park
With a trumpet in his hand
Like he's listening back to the good old bands
And the click of high heeled shoes
Old Furry sings the blues
Propped up in his bed
With his dentures and his leg removed
And Ginny's there
For her kindness and Furry's beer
She's the old man's angel overseer
Pawn shops glitter like gold tooth caps
In the gray decay
They chew the last few dollars off
Old Beale Street's carcass
Carrion and mercy
Blue and silver sparkling drums
Cheap guitars, eye shades and guns
Aimed at the hot blood of being no one
Down and out in Memphis Tennessee
Old Furry sings the blues
You bring him smoke and drink and he'll play for you
It's mostly muttering now and sideshow spiel
But there was one song he played
I could really feel
There's a double bill murder at the New Daisy
The old girl's silent across the street
She's silent, waiting for the wrecker's beat
Silent, staring are her stolen name
Diamond boys and satin dolls
Bourbon laughter, ghosts, history falls
To parking lots and shopping malls
As they tear down old Beale Street
Old Furry sings the blues
He points a bony finger at you and
"I don't like you"
Everybody laughs as if it's the old man's standard joke
But it's true
We're only welcome for our drink and smoke
W.C. Handy I'm rich and I'm fay
And I'm not familiar with what you played
But I get such strong impressions of your hey day
Looking up and down old Beale Street
Ghosts of the darktown society
Come right out of the bricks at me
Like it's a Saturday night
They're in their finery
Dancing it up and making deals
Furry sings the blues
Why should I expect that old guy to give it to me true
Fallen to hard luck
And time and other thieves
While our limo is shining on his shanty street
Old Furry sings the blues
Mitchell has always been resentful of the Dylan adulation, a few years back she attacked him for plagerism. I never listen to her anymore but always listen to Dylan whose work is richer, deeper and certainly wider in its influence. At times his voice is strange but for the most part it is uniquely expressive of the thoughts and emotions of his words. Crosby had a pretty voice at one point but he’s a snake. Old people settling scores for the record.
Cohen was right, Dylan is the highest mountain and Crosby is a tuffet
Yeah, Dylan is a GREAT songwriter. All you need to do is check out Must Be Santa....
Michael said... "Joni kind of peaked at BLUE."
Well allow me to retort.... When Joni moved from Reprise to Asylum Records it kicked off a string of remarkable albums which ran up till almost the end of the 70s -- either "Court and Spark" or "Hejira" is way more sophisticated than her earlier work.
This a arguably the least interesting thing that Crosby has said on his twitter feed in months. He regularly plugs young musicians and collaborates with many of them. Just click on YouTube and check them out. I've found some very interesting music this way.
On the other hand, Crosby's opinion of Mitchel vs. Dylan is entirely predictable - and not only because they were close. So the opinion doesn't tell you anything you didn't know about Crosby, and I'm not going to listen to Joni's albums more than Dylan's just because Crosby likes them better. At least a few commenters chimed in with some Joni albums I hadn't paid attention to. Worth the thread.
Joni's sound depends heavily on the tunings. Crosby came up with them. Nobody else uses them. I just don't see that she's a great musician. Her lyrics are interesting, personal like most women songwriters, it seems. I am a fan, but it's not even close. It's unfair to Dylan to write off the originality of his work because it is so heavily copied. Nobody copies Mitchell's style, it sort of unique to her.
Shania Twain is the really influential Canadian singer songwriter.
I consider Dylan to be a genius. HIs lyrics continue to haunt me. Joni Mitchell wrote some quirky lyrics and pretty songs I quickly grew out of. Dylan's raspy voice and simple musicianship are more powerful . Technical expertise can end up being pretty bland and forgettable. Dylan, I remember.
javabeast said...
Never got the appeal of Dylan... And as far as I know, he never frolicked on frozen Lake Mendota on skates.
12/14/18, 9:44 AM
Wow! So cool. I didn't know that, javabeast. Thanks.
ps: 35 years after, a certain blogger we all know and love frolicked on skates on the same frozen lake.
You know what's great fun? Reading y'alls opinions.
I just wish we were all around a table in a pub with refreshing drinks.
I loved Joni's "Shadows and Light," in part because I caught her concert on MTV back in the day, and bought the double album, and learned about Jaco Patoris and, later, his sad end.
My favorite Dylan album is "Love and Theft," because a big dylan fan on the copy desk turned me on to him, and I listened to that one a lot.
Yeah, I'm shallow. For lyrical and musical brilliant, I love XTC. Try their "Oranges and Lemons" album. It'll blow your mind with its imaginative wordplay. They're what the Beatles should have become.
I can only think of a few people who have made incredible runs of albums.
The Beatles from "Rubber Soul" to "Abbey Road".
Steely Dan "Pretzel Logic" to "Gaucho".
And Joni Mitchell from "Blue" to "Hejira".
A sliver of the title song, "Hejira":
'White flags of winter chimneys
Wave truce against the moon'
I get cold and dreamy just reading those lines.
And as someone mention above, "Song For Sharon" is a long, true telling of her current life in a letter to a childhood friend. It included the following line:
'Now there are twenty-nine skaters on Wollman Rink
Circling in singles and in pairs'
I always wondered about Wollman Rink and later found out it was saved by...ta da...Donald Trump!
"tim in vermont said...
Anybody who uses "wordsmith' for 'poet' or lyricist' is in no position to judge."
I agree.
Joni credits Dylan's lyrics with inspiring her own move away from traditional folk music into original compositions -- she says (in a documentary about her work) that when she heard Dylan's personal lyrics she realized one could write about one's internal life and that was the key for the blossoming of her own songwriting. I think she was writing songs before that but they were more like traditional folk songs. An early great song of hers is Urge for Going -- the Tom Rush version was popular before Joni was very well known.
I think Joni and Dylan are roughly in the same league. They both have a huge range of work that includes many great songs and quite a few clunkers. I would say both are true artists -- more concerned with creating new work than with what the audience might think. Joni was interested in exploring jazz, and a lot of people like that late work.
Another similarity I see between Dylan and Joni is that in their best songs, the lyrics are great and the melody is great and there is a strong integration between the two.
This is the Althouse community version of Leonard Cohen's 'Tower of Song.' Cohen put himself under Hank Williams, but he was in Hank's league. Maybe not if Williams hadn't died at 29.
Bill Peschel said...My favorite Dylan album is "Love and Theft,"
I love that album too, esp. the bluesy cuts (Sad And Lonesome Day, Cry A While).
It had the unfortunate fate of being released on 9/11/01
James Brown.
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