In the spirit of revision and reappropriation and hubris—the spirit of folk music—amandapetrusich compiles a companion to Bob Dylan’s “The Philosophy of Modern Song”: her own list of formative records.
”: “A secret to be decoded, written in a foreign tongue, tucked into an eyeglass’s case, delivered to an open window at half past midnight, by a snowy owl with a crooked blue eye,” I’ll rasp at no one. Dylan’s descriptions are tone poems, intricate evocations of a certain mood or sensation. He is extremely interested in the devastations that connect us.
The premise of “The Philosophy of Modern Song” was to pick a finite number of songs—for Dylan to define the canon that defined him—and he did so without equivocation. Much like Smith’s “Anthology,” Dylan’s book is deeply personal, despite its sweeping title. To be fair, taste should be idiosyncratic and kind of awkward. It’s obvious that Dylan did not tweak his preferences to suit a cultural narrative or to minimize his age, despite apparently being aware of the smirking gibe “O.K.
Yet that the book contains only four songs performed by women—let that sink in!—is both grim and astounding. This might lead readers to question Dylan’s character and, more worrying, to wonder about the limits of his musical knowledge. Even if it were possible to hotfoot around the lack of women , his essay on Johnnie Taylor’s “” is peppered with odd, doddering declarations: a married couple with no children is “not a family. . . .
And so in the spirit of revision and reappropriation and hubris, which is to say in the spirit of folk music, I took a stab at making a companion piece to “The Philosophy of Modern Song”: my own list of formative records that have skewed my perception. They are presented here in no order, and without annotation. Not all of these songs were written by their respective performers, but all of the performances are extraordinary.
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