Bob Dylan - The Philosophy of Modern Song

Your life is unraveling. You came to the big city, and you found out things about yourself you didnt want to know, youve been on the dark side too long.

Originally released as a single

(RCA Victor, 1963)

Written by Danny Dill and Mel Tillis

You went to sleep last night in Detroit City. This morning you overslept, dreamt about white snow cotton fields, and had delusions about imaginary farmsteads. Youve been speculating about your mother, having visions about your old pappy, making up stories about your brother, and idealizing your sister, and now you want to go home. Back to where things are more neighborly.

From the postcards and junk mail that you dashed off, everybody assumes youre a bigwig, that things are cool and beautiful, but theyre not, and the disgrace of failure is overwhelming. Your life is unraveling. You came to the big city, and you found out things about yourself you didnt want to know, youve been on the dark side too long.

By day you make the jeeps and limousines and the gas guzzlers, and by night you make the cocktail lounges. Everywhere you go people treat you like you are dead, everywhere you go you uncover more liesif only they could read between the lines they could figure it out, it wouldnt take much guess work.

You rode a train full of merchandise northbound, and you ended up in Detroit City looking for a pot of gold, one fruitless search after another, each one taking an unexpected bad turn, and youre exhaustedseems like youve been here your whole life, squandering opportunities, lost opportunities. Every day another daily dose of poison, what are you going to do?

Youre going to take your foolish self-love and egotism and go back to whats familiar, back to the ones thatll stand by you, the ones that you left in the background. You want to go back home, you demand that of yourself. Youve got a thirst and a hunger and a need, you got to get up and go, beat it, and push off. Time to say adios. You want to go home, where theyll embrace you and take you in. Nobody will ask you for an explanation. No ones going to pepper you with relentless questions. Youre going back to where you can clear your life up, going back to people of understanding. The people who know you best.

WHEN THIS SONG WAS WRITTEN , Detroit was a place to run to; new jobs, new hopes, new opportunities. Cars came off the assembly lines and straight into our hearts. Since then, like many American cities, it has ridden a roller coaster between affluence and decline. It has recently emerged from years of ruin, only to find itself tested again. But people from Detroit, the home of Motown and Fortune Records, birthplace of Hank Ballard, Mitch Ryder, Jackie Wilson, Jack White, Iggy Pop, and the MC5, can tellany setback is only temporary, which is why dreams like Bobby Bares seem as real today as the day they were first sung. Hes able to manufacture a completely fictitious life just by penning some letters back home.

What is it about lapsing into narration in a song that makes you think the singer is suddenly revealing the truth?

Bobby Bare first tried his hand at becoming a recording artist back in the 1950s, eventually signing with Capitol Records and releasing a couple of singles that went nowhere. Trying his luck as a songwriter, he wrote The All American Boy and did a demo for his friend Bill Parsons. Bill recorded a version, but the record company, Fraternity Records, decided to release the demo that Bare had recorded. A clerical error left Bill Parsonss name on the label, so Bobby Bares first chart hit was under the name Bill Parsons. This was probably the first incident of identity theft in America.

This is not so much the song of a dreamer, but the song of someone who is caught up in a fantasy of the way things used to be. But the listener knows that it just doesnt exist. There is no mother, no dear old papa, sister, or brother. They are all either dead or gone. The girl that hes dreaming about long ago got married to a divorce attorney and she has three kids. Like thousands of others he left the farm, came to the big city to get ahead, and got lost. Thats why this song works.

Originally released on the album This Years Model

(Radar, 1978)

Written by Elvis Costello

THIS SONG SPEAKS NEW SPEAK . Its the song you sing when youve reached the boiling point. Tense and uneasy, comes with a discountwith a lot of give-a-way stuff. And youre going to extend that stuff till it ruptures and splits into a million pieces. You never look back you look forward, youve had a classical education, and some on the job training. Youve learned to look into every loathsome nauseating face and expect nothing.

You live in a world of romance and rubble, and you roam the streets at all hours of the night. Youve acquired things and brought people the goods.

Its not like you have a promising future. Youre the alienated hero whos been taken for a ride by a quick-witted little hellcat, the hot-blooded sex starved wench that you depended on so much, who failed you. You thought she was heaven and life everlasting, but she was just strong willed and determinedturned you into a synthetic and unscrupulous person. Now youve come to the place where youre going to blow things up, puncture it, shoot it down.