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Picking a favourite Bob Dylan song is in many ways an impossible task. This being Dylan, an artist who five decades in is still producing some of his finest work, a list of just 60 tracks means that some of the greatest songs ever composed might not be present.
But by handing the choices over to Dylan’s fellow musicians and songwriters we feel we’ve given a different perspective (another side of, if you will) on Dylan’s craft and enduring genius. And these aren’t just any musicians, either.
Some of the names below played on and helped record many of the songs featured, while modern-day acolytes including Beck, Bono , Coldplay's Chris Martin and Lucinda Williams have lined up to pick their favourite Dylan numbers. The closest we have to the heirs to his crown, Nick Cave and Patti Smith, meanwhile, reveal a fresh perspective on his work, while Dylan’s one-time mentor Pete Seeger reveals the true story behind Dylan’s decision to go electric.
Elsewhere, East Coast rapper Nas recalls his teenage conversion to Bob, while contemporaries like the late David Crosby, Jimmy Webb and Paul McCartney (arguably the only serious challenger to Dylan’s status as the world’s greatest living songwriter) recall first-hand the seismic changes brought on by Dylan’s songs.
(Bringing It All Back Home, 1965)
As selected by Paul McCartney
“I know it’s corny, but I heard him do it at the Albert Hall [May 9, 1965], and I was aching for him to do it and knowing Dylan I thought he might not do it. Just to be awkward, just to be perverse. It was the infamous show where all the folkies thought he’d sold out. How crap is that? It was fantastic. First half is folky, and then the second half was electric with The Band - it was the all-time concert. But then of course, somebody starts going, 'He’s deserted the folk world!' Yeah, no wonder, look at you mate. So he did it there, the first time I’d ever heard it live. A really good song, very much of the period. Totally nailed that year. I was lucky to be there.”
I Threw It All Away
(Nashville Skyline, 1969)
As selected by Nick Cave
“This is my favourite Dylan song. The production is so clean, fluid and uncluttered, and there is an ease and innocence to Dylan’s voice in its phrasing, in its tone that is in no Dylan recording before or after. There is a perfectly measured emotional pull to the singing. This is a guy doing the job God put him on Earth to do, and doing it well. This song is about craft; Dylan removes himself, the burden of his history, his myth, from the process of songwriting to craft a song unparalleled in its gorgeousness. It’s mathematics, music by numbers, and all the more affecting for it. It’s Mozart man up against the wracked Beethoven of his other work.
(Street-Legal, 1978)
As selected by Patti Smith
“I’ve always cherished this song. The first time I heard it was when I’d just moved to Detroit and was living in a hotel room with Fred [‘Sonic’ Smith]. I put on Bob’s new record, and Changing Of The Guards was the first song... it just moved me to tears. I would never presume to know what his songs are about, but it has such a mix of tarot card and Joan of Arc imagery. The song starts, ‘Sixteen years...,’ and Joan of Arc was 16 when they shaved her head and burned her at the stake. No matter how bitter or melancholy his songs are, there’s always so much resilience, a sense of him striking back. Like the line that goes, ‘Gentlemen, he said, I don’t need your organisation, I’ve shined your shoes.’... The downtrodden hero always manages to have the last word. I don’t really analyse his songs, but I’ve been following him since I was 16-years-old and I don’t question what he does. He can do what he wants as far as I’m concerned.”
