Outlook on Bob Dylan Fallen Angels
As a fellow singer-songwriter, it makes it sometimes harder and sometimes easier to write about someone else’s music. I feel that I have known Bob Dylan since 1963. I remember the first time I got his Freewheeling with my Dad who was not a Dylan fan then, but after a while his voice got a hold of you with his talking blues caught you somehow and forced you to listen. I never had an inkling that he could sing on the pitch, on the note as he does in this new album of his, Fallen Angels. I never had any idea that his voice would be so appealing.
I still tend to play Highway 61 Revisited when trying to get back in the spirit of starting on a new project, painting, or something less creative. I am entirely sure this new recording makes me want to sit back and remember about past relationships and wonder about those I still want to make in the future.
Mr. Dylan, in his gracious manner, has brought back into pop music, the notion of a love song. He may also bring back something that I have missed, slow dancing, which is a great way to get up close to talk to someone, a strange thing to do these days when everyone types instead of talking. The songs chosen are classic love songs, ideal for his very lovely voice, which surprised my Dad and made the songs so appealing.
These are the songs
- “Young at Heart”
- “Maybe You’ll Be There”
- “Polka Dots and Moonbeams”
- “All the Way”
- “Skylark”
- “Nevertheless”
- “All or Nothing at All”
- “On a Little Street in Singapore”
- “It Had to Be You”
- “Melancholy Mood”
- “That Old Black Magic”
- “Come Rain or Come Shine”
More than anything this means to me that anyone, especially Bob Dylan, can always reinvent themselves, as we get older. This seems as dramatic a shift as when he went from folk to electric at Newport in 1965. He came to Austin in ’65, too. I remember the people then who walked out when he brought out The Band, but I was one of the ones who stayed. I loved his change then, and I love this now!