My mother is an interesting study of musical taste. She’s of the baby boomer generation. Born in 1955, she wasn’t quite old enough to partake in the counter-culture (not that her super-Conservative roots would open her up to that anyway), but she certainly was part of a generation that by and large put rock and roll on the map. Yet outside of The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel and maybe a handful of other groups, my mother is not a fan of the music of the 1960s, and she especially despises Bob Dylan and his singing voice.
Granted, she is certainly not the only one on Planet Earth to criticize Dylan’s admittedly nasal approach to singing the songs he writes. In fact, Bob Dylan has become so synonymous with “terrible singer” that it’s entered the world of cliche at this point. Comments range from saying he simply shouldn’t sing his own songs to him being the devil incarnate and completely devoid of artistic merit. I, for one, am sick of this criticism, and perhaps this puts me in a tiny majority, but I happen to love the way Dylan sings.
Why? Well, for starters his voice has character. In the days before AutoTune and digital recording trickery, what you a person sang once the “record” button was pressed is what you get on the tape. Analog recording was unforgiving for singers. In this era though, can we really tell the difference between a lot of the singers’ voices? The advents of pitch correction and digital editing certainly give artists more tools to put their “best” foot forward, but have these techniques robbed the performances of soul, and heart?
Despite it’s nasal qualities, he actually sings on key much of the time. It’s only live that I’ve ever personally heard him stray off key. However, there isn’t a single singer alive today who has sung every public performance perfectly with absolutely no sour notes. For me, singing on-key will forgive many, many timbre or color gripes I may have about someone’s voice.
Say what you will about Dylan’s singing voice, but no one can take away from him that he meant every word that came out of his mouth. :Subterranean Homesick Blues” is a prime example of what makes Dylan tick. It has lyrics that spin out of Dylan’s mind and mouth at breakneck speed, rhyming couplets coming like machine gun fire. “Don’t follow leaders, and watch for parking meters” is one of my favorite Dylan lyrics of all time.
Songs like “The Times They Are A Changin'” demonstrate clearly that Dylan bowed to no one. Truly, his words are just as important as how he sung them. This, however, should not trivialize the contribution his singing made in turning these songs to classic protest anthems. As many times as “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Blowin’ in The Wind” have been covered, there is still nothing more powerful than hearing Dylan sing it himself. The poetry imbued in those lyrics is expressed best from the poet himself.
However, if you’re looking for two concrete examples of the man truly being able to sing well, look no further than “Forever Young” and “The Man in Me.” The latter gives me goose bumps every single time. When he sings “”But, oh what a wonderful feeling, just to know that you are near. It sets my heart a-reeling, from my toes up to my ears” he reaches levels of passion and emotion that I defy anyone to tell me isn’t beautiful singing.
The truth is that while Dylan’s voice may not be everyone’s cup of tea, he was still a technically adept singer, capable of imparting his voice with frantic energy, or true soul and power. The bottom line of course is that his voice fits the songs he writes. Over the years several recording of pop-stars singing to backing tracks have been released, and their off-key warbling far surpass Bob’s adenoidal qualities. Me, I’d take fifteen thousand songs sung in the most nasally Bob Dylan voice than be forced to sit through one AutoTuned and chopped up song sung by the latest pop idol.
The next time Britney writes a song like “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” I’ll sit and listen the arguments that Dylan really can’t sing.
