The Philosophy of Modern Song Quotes

“Sometimes people ask songwriters what a song means, not realizing if they had more words to explain it they would’ve used them in the song.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“The thing about being misunderstood is that it diminishes your enjoyment of life”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Turns out, the best way to shut people up isn’t to take away their forum—it’s to give them all their own separate pulpits. Ultimately most folks will listen to what they already know and read what they already agree with. They will devour pale retreads of the familiar and perhaps never get to discover they might have a taste for Shakespeare or flamenco dancing. It’s the equivalent of letting an eight-year-old pick their own diet. Inevitably they’ll choose chocolate for every meal and end up undernourished with rotted teeth and weighing five hundred pounds.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“As a people, we tend to feel very proud of ourselves because of democracy. We walk into that booth and cast our votes and wear that adhesive “I Voted” sticker as if it is a badge of honor. But the truth is more complex. We have as much responsibility coming out of the booth as we do going in. If the people we elect are sending people to their deaths or worse, sending other people half a world away—whom we never even consider because they don’t look like us or sound like us—to their deaths and we do nothing to stop it, aren’t we just as guilty? And if we want to see a war criminal all we have to do is look in the mirror.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“There was chaos and turmoil and narrow escapes but through it all there was singing that could not be denied. Many people believe that the sound that made George Jones the King of Country Music came about because George listened so closely to his ex–bass player and was more dependable. And when a guy who rides his lawn mower to the liquor store because his wife hid the car keys is more dependable, you have a sense of what country music was like at the time.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Bluegrass is the other side of heavy metal. Both are musical forms steeped in tradition. They are the two forms of music that visually and audibly have not changed in decades. People in their respective fields still dress like Bill Monroe and Ronnie James Dio. Both forms have a traditional instrumental lineup and a parochial adherence to form.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Contrary to what most people think, when you pay money for sex, that’s about the cheapest price there is.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“A BIG PART OF SONGWRITING, like all writing, is editing—distilling thought down to essentials. Novice writers often hide behind filigree. In many cases the artistry is in what is unsaid. As the old saying goes, an iceberg moves gracefully because most of it is beneath the surface.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“What is it about lapsing into narration in a song that makes you think the singer is suddenly revealing the truth?”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Today, the medium contains multitudes and man needs only pick one thing he likes and feast exclusively on a stream dedicated to it. There’s twenty-four hours of blues, surf music, left-wing whining, right-wing badgering, any stripe of belief imaginable. There are stories as interesting as lemming suicides and totally true, like the fact that whale songs have inexplicably lowered in pitch 30 percent since the sixties. But these stories are buried on animal documentary channels, where they will probably never capture the general public’s imagination.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Money depends on the scarcity of what props it up for its value, but isn’t that also an illusion? Rare and precious metals like diamonds are controlled by blood merchants who modulate their flow to keep the value at an acceptable level. And if gold is so rare, how are there enough gold bars to build a home for a family of two in Fort Knox alone? It doesn’t help that all things are constantly devalued. Before Gutenberg made type movable, only the wealthiest could afford books, and a Bible with tooled leather cover, gold-edged pages, and jewel-encrusted bindings was a symbol of not just piety but status, wealth, and taste. Within a few generations, the rabble were able to follow along in the hymnals from the cheap seats, forcing the wealthy to find another symbol to lord over the hoi polloi. ’Twas ever thus. The battle between the rich man and the poor man is fought on many battlefields, not all of them immediately obvious. Today the wealthy dress in sweatsuits and the homeless have iPhones. People with no discernible income buy flawless knockoff watches with one-letter misspellings to thwart copyright. And then wealthy people buy the same “Rulex” so their six-figure real watches won’t get stolen when they are out at dinner.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Then there’s the trap of easy rhymes.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“MIDNIGHT RIDER THE ALLMAN BROTHERS Originally released on the album Idlewild South (Capricorn, 1970) Written by Gregg Allman and Robert Kim Payne”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“That’s the problem with a lot of things these days. Everything is too full now; we are spoon-fed everything. All songs are about one thing and one thing specifically, there is no shading, no nuance, no mystery. Perhaps this is why music is not a place where people put their dreams at the moment; dreams suffocate in these airless environs.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“George was a hell-raiser, prone to drink and miss a gig,”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“The Osborne Brothers are a high-powered bluegrass group. Maybe the most high.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Most people, nowadays, don’t even know that they know the song. Whiffenpoof is just an alien word to them. But start singing “We’re poor little lambs who have lost our way” and you pretty much guarantee that they will reply, “Baa! Baa! Baa!”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“He can afford to be unassuming because he has what it takes. A man with lightning in his pocket doesn’t ever brag.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“From here he went on to play chamber music, write songs with Burt Bacharach, do country records, cover records, soul records, ballet and orchestral music. When you are writing songs with Burt Bacharach, you obviously don’t give a fuck what people think. Elvis blows through all kinds of genres like they are not even there. “Pump It Up” is what gives him a license to do all these things.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Elvis Costello and the Attractions were a better band than any of their contemporaries. Light years better. Elvis himself was a unique figure. Horn-rimmed glasses, quirky, pigeon-toed and intense. The only singer-guitarist in the band. You couldn’t say that he didn’t remind you of Buddy Holly. The Buddy stereotype. At least on the surface. Elvis had Harold Lloyd in his DNA as well.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“Not that there’s anything wrong with commercialism but like all things monetary, it’s based on a leap of faith; more abstract than Frank Stella’s geometrics. The only reason money is worth anything is because we agree it is. Like religion, these agreements can change according to country and culture, but those changes are merely cosmetic, usually only name and denomination. The basic tenets remain constant.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song

“It’s one of those songs that makes a good record but it’s too much work to make it believable in live performance.”
― Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song