That one does grate on me, I guess because it seems people have been using “was” as a subjunctive less often in the past few decades so it really sticks out now. The “they”-“they” in LA Woman doesn’t bother me, though. I understand what he means and I can’t find any other way to say it that’s as easy.
“…you know they are all liars.”
And don’t get me started with stars falling “from the sky, for you and I.”
Bryan Adams makes the same mistake on “Run to You.” “That’ll change if she ever found out about you and I.”
Poetic license, I get it. I just can’t get no satisfaction.
To Love Somebody by the Bee Gees is one of my all-time favorite songs, buuuut:
In my brain
I see your face again
Working a little too hard on rhyming, IMHO.
See, I generally greatly dislike the doors, but I find those fine. “If I was to say to you” is a very colloquial construction. That’s how people around me talk, so it sounds natural to me. “If I were” suggests someone who went to college or something. As for the LA Woman lyric, that’s also just fine to me. It’s just “they” being used as a gender-neutral singular, which is how I use it these days, anyway (I mean, when I want a gender neutral pronoun, that’s what I turn to. Of course, I use it in its traditional plural sense, too.)
I always heard that Bryan Adams line as “that’d change if she ever found out about you and I”
It could, but there’s no context that even hints at that.
I Googled the lyrics, just in case there was something I was missing in hearing it on the car radio. Really no clue of anything that I can see.
It’s an improvement, that’s for sure!
Time to hold a Nobel prize winner to account. In an otherwise majestic epic:
“I muttered somethin’ under my breath
She studied the lines on my face
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces
Of my shoe
Tangled up in blue”
j
I actually liked that line, guy’s in a topless place and the woman bends down to tie his shoe- like the imagery of that whole stanza.
But I came in to complain about what I think is one of his finest works- Visions of Johanna. In the other verses we have wonderful images- the heat pipes coughing, girls playing blind man’s bluff with the keychain, the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face, the jelly faced women and Mona Lisa having the highway blues, the jewels and binoculars hang from the head of a mule, and finally the fish truck that loads while his conscience explodes. True genius in all of this. But then we have: the Little Boy Lost stanza. Seriously, four stanzas of brilliance and one filler stanza with no notable lines. Maybe it would be some other writer’s best work, but it’s subpar Dylan mixed in with utter genius. That stanza should have been left out.
Another stanza which would have been better left out was the end of We Better Talk This Over- If the song had ended with “be grateful for what we’ve shared together and be glad” it would have been fine. But no, we get the awkward transition-magician rhyme and the desire to tie back the bond they they’ve both gone beyond.
Finally I’ve gone one for Blondie- that phrase “mucho mistrust”. Sounds awkward to me, they could have done better.
No, no. That’s a wonderful verse, probably one of my 10 favorites from Dylan.
The song’s timeline is pointedly jumbled, but I think that’s the narrator’s introduction to a person who becomes a major character in his life. And while the bending down imagery is a little porny, it transforms the woman from a performer, maybe a hustler, to a bemused caregiver.
Yes, and the narrator is trying not to think of her as a sexual object- she’s in the topless place and he keeps looking at the side of her face. She’s bending down to tie his shoes and it makes him uneasy, whereas most guys would welcome such a position. In the next verse, she takes him home and gives him a book of Italian poetry and it evokes his thoughts of… well someone else, whoever “you” was.
C’mon #1 - I did say it was “an otherwise majestic epic”; and
C’mon #2 - since infancy, has anyone ever bent down to tie the lace(s) of your shoe?
(Though not being a frequenter of topless establishments, I have to concede that maybe this happens therein).
But I’m just left with the feeling that this song demands a lot of words that rhyme with Blue and this is lazy.
Brief aside: I have never settled in my mind whether this song takes place in a single lifetime, or whether I’m more comfortable with the idea that it spans several reincarnations of soulmates. I think the former, but I wonder about the latter. Thoughts?
j
Regarding the rhymes with blue bit, once you’ve established that every stanza ends with the same line, it sort of forces your hand. I think it works here, just as it does in Simple Twist of Fate.
The single lifetime vs reincarnations is an interesting thought which had not occurred to me. I think the former as well, but one of the beauties of Dylan’s work is that he leaves enough gaps in the story for you to fill in some of it yourself. There is an alternate verse of TUIB in I think the Biograph CD that makes it perhaps even more uncertain.
Oh, and no topless woman (or any other person) has bent down to tie the laces of my shoe. But I would not be opposed to such a gesture.
Heaven forfend. 
This is the second verse of Cupid by Daniel Powter. I’ll listen to the first verse and then change the station.
And when we fight we fight
And it ain’t a pretty sight
Well it’s not complex
It’s the make up sex
Don’t we always get that right
Well they…
Perfectly fine little bubblegum pop song and he pulls in makeup sex. Oy.
There’s a lot of discussion and analysis of this song on the net. Some speculate that Dylan himself is Little Boy Lost. Others say it refers to Blake’s poem “The Little Boy Lost.” In any event, it’s certainly not a throwaway verse. It never occurred to me that it didn’t fit right in with the rest of the song.
The song comes right before Tommy’s parents take him to the doctor who reveals he’s not physically deaf or blind. It serves as a hint to the upcoming diagnosis. Also, the character is listed in the lyric sheet as “local lad”. The character is just offering a WAG as to why the “deaf blind and dumb kid” can play a “mean pinball”. It’s a guess that later proves to be incorrect.
You know what I mean. It’s not as bad as changing the lyrics of “I can’t get no satisfaction” to the clunky “I can’t get any satisfaction,” but the colloquial diction of “if I was” vs “if I were” sounds better to my ears in a rock song.
It could be form a lifetime of hearing the song. Not a rock song, but “If I was a rich man…” would sound bad to me after hearing it with “were” for so many years.
Nearly every song with versions of the phrase “make love”. If you replace that euphemism with “f**king”, you’ll see how skeevy the songs really are.
[Nerd fan theory]
Pretty sure it’s a sneaky reference to a repeated use of the word ‘hope’ in the films to refer to Aragorn. ‘Hope’, as I’m sure you’re aware from memorising every word of the books, being the translation of his childhood name ‘Estel’. It’s only really obvious at all in one scene in the extended version, but if you watch with that in mind, ‘hope’ certainly seems to have deliberate double meaning in the films.
So… the meaning I think they’re going for is that yes, Aragorn will eventually die, as seen in Arwen’s vision of the future, but that’s OK really, 'cos everyone’ll meet up later in the West for a pint.
[/Nerd fan theory]
I always interpret the ‘Your sex is on fire’ line as meaning women. All women. On long solo car journeys I have been known to shout at the car radio ‘We’re on fire?! Stop singing about it and put us out!’