4. Bob Dylan "Desolation Row"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93tpBGhqpYk Dylan may well be the ultimate purveyor of the "long song" artform, which probably means that it's some form of blasphemy to only rank his greatest epic at number four on this list. With that said however, it's quite hard to write anything about "Desolation Row" that hasn't been stated dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times before. The song is perfect, one of Dylan's best from both a lyrical and melodic standpoint. On record, it functions as the closing track from Dylan's 1965 masterwork, "Highway 61 Revisited." It also serves as the other side of the coin to "Like a Rolling Stone," the opening track from "Highway 61" and Rolling Stone Magazine's choice for the greatest song ever written. But where "Like a Rolling Stone" saw the enigmatic singer/songwriter plugging in his guitar and tearing down his identity as the folk music voice of a generation, "Desolation Row" was at its core just an all-acoustic folk song. Since its release, critics have cited "Desolation Row" as everything from an elegy for the dying folk music scene (which, with this album, Dylan helped kill for a while) to a rousing "F*ck you" for the music industry as a whole. But no matter what Dylan's intentions were with this song, it is first and foremost an entrancing 11-minute opus of storytelling and poetry that displays one of the world's best songwriters at the peak of his talent. Every verse (yes, all 10 of them) gives us a new story, a new character, a new world, and Dylan weaves them all effortlessly together into a stirring lullaby of Biblical chaos and Shakespearian confusion.
Craig Manning
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Craig is a Chicago-based freelance writer who like to talk incessantly about music on AbsolutePunk.net. He also does writing for marketing companies to "pay the bills," but his true passion lies with the pop culture sphere.
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