Review: The Philosophy of Modern Song

The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Quite an odd book, especially on audio. Dylan picks about 50 pop songs from the 20s to the 90s or so, songs that he likes. For many of them, he does a kind of slam poetry take off of the song lyrics. Then there is an often bizarre writeup about the song itself, or its singer, or composer, or a place it mentions. One song write-up was mostly a list of American pop songs that were originally foreign songs in other languages. On audio, Dylan himself does the slam poetry reading, while a cast of stars take turns reading the song writeups. Not Nobel quality, though you do get a little insight into how Dylan thinks about songs. I listened to the 2/5 of the songs I hadn't heard, or hadn't remembered, before I read the section on the song. It made the book more interesting, and I wouldn't have understood what was being written about otherwise.

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