The Philosophy of Modern Song
By Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi and
Narrated by Bob Dylan
4/5
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About this audiobook
Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence.
In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years, and like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan has released thirty-nine studio albums, which collectively have sold over 125 million copies around the world. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor, a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. His memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list.
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Reviews for The Philosophy of Modern Song
15 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chapters that give a history of the song , and employee narrators other than the author are my favorite. When the author philosophizes you often feel like he is talking for the sake of talking.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A wildly entertaining audiobook listen to the songs as you read.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Not free google stole my money so I'm o sad
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As a songwriter, this audiobook has been transformational. Many of the chapters are read by Dylan with just a touch of echo which is quite unique for an audiobook narrator, but sets his voice up differently than the movie star narrators. It’s like being shot thru a cannon thru the Brill building. I LOVED THIS AUDIOBOOK!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Lurid, turgid, hyperventilated “prose” — headstrong in its pessimism betraying conspicuous lack of awareness of history
1 person found this helpful