The Philosophy of Modern Song

By: Bob Dylan

Narrated by: Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac, Helen Mirren, Rita Moreno, Sissy Spacek, Alfre Woodard, Jeffrey Wright, Renée Zellweger

Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan’s first book of new writing since 2004’s Chronicles: Volume One—and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. The audio is narrated by an all-star lineup including Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac, Helen Mirren, Rita Moreno, Sissy Spacek, Alfre Woodard, Jeffrey Wright, and Renée Zellweger!

Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence.

In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years, and like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement.

©2022 Bob Dylan. All rights reserved. (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

A proofreader would have been an excellent idea.

This is an interesting book about songs and songwriting but the errors are mind boggling…
For example:
“By theTime I get to Phoenix”, Jimmy Webb, 1996.

Superlative in its poetry, music history, and read

Quite an epic telling of the many genres, attitudes and family histories that are a part of the songs of particular interest to Dylan, includes in this 60+ chapter book. Each chapter tells a different story, sometimes read by Dylan and at others by various stellar talent. No only is Dylan possbly the greatest American lyricist, but in my opinion also likely its best poet. each chapter sounds like a poem or ballad, hitting you right between the eyes about a musician that you may or may not be familiar with, but Dylan distills who they are into a few short chapter minutes. I found myself stopping the audio and jumping to listen to a track or two about the musician he or another reader refers to for context, even if I knew the musician or song.

Easily the type of audio book you can listen to many times.

A Masterclass by the Preeminent American Poet

Bob Dylan is a great writer because he is a great reader. He is a great musician because he is a great listener. The same wild eyed intensity that you see in his stage performances, where it is, as if you can see him channeling the ghosts of all the men and women who have ever sung the songs that he is either singing or borrowing from, at same manic fervor, exists in the man’s ears. He hears things from other dimensions, he can hear what the songwriter meant to say, even if he or she completely flubbed it. Bob Dylan is the kind of human being that inspires hagiography, and I don’t mean sycophantic or flattering catalogs of their lives, I mean, literal Scriptures. I mean new books added to the Bible, and he is the star of those books. He is a prophet, and like all prophets, he speaks and writes in poetry.

He analyzes and comments on a selection of modern songs and, as he does so, it’s as if he composes it doesn’t songs on top of inside and around each one of the songs that he’s communicating about. He operates, according to a different kind of logic. A logic of truth, but not correspondence. A logic, where the meaning of something is conveyed, even if it takes a roundabout, scenic journey, and incorporate all kinds of wildly crazy associations, that upon reflection aren’t crazy at all. They are exactly what this song is about. He is able to demonstrate how seemingly juvenile utterly simplistic songs are actually deceptively complex and nuanced. Then he can show you how a song that is attempting to be highbrow is actually bawdy and perverse. He helps you hear a classic love song, as if it was written by a serial killer, because there are some forms of love that are so consuming that they actually do make men and women to the tax people with murder the object of their love if they could.

He writes about poetry poetically. He has never not singing. This book is a treasure of the human spirit. A lot to be required reading for anyone who desires to learn more about the folk cultures of the world and about how the human consciousness emerge from the soil grew up in the sky scrapers then shot itself on the moon.

Amazing book!!

This book is like a music appreciation class taught by 80 year old Bob Dylan

Wonderful walk through songdom

Beautifully produced with an ensemble of voices led by Bob’s. I read the book first and then listened to it combined with listening to the songs. It was a thoroughly fun and enlightening listen.

Brilliant

Bob Dylan can analyze a song as well as he writes one. I learned more about music in this book than in almost everything I've read or seen. And I am a former disc jockey! His brilliant and entertaining analysis of all genres of music is riveting. This book is as good as his songs!

Fun and Instructive

The audiobook is what this book is mean to be. I can imagine just reading words on a page, but hearing them is far more fun at least, if not more interesting. The choices of who would read each part was brilliant at times and, at times, questionable. But always good in the sense of not haven’t all these stories and insights tied to one voice. It’s good Dylan’s own voice is the default reader throughout, but also good that he’s not the only reader. The writing is unexpectedly Dylanesque in that is clear and concise, strong with images and in its phrasing The writing can verge on poetry without becoming syrupy or poetically obscure. It’s a well-written, well-thought out, well-executed audio and intellectual experience. It will also teach almost any serious music lover something new about music in general and the specific songs covered in particular.

Bob Dylan’s Narration is Very cool

Bob Dylan should have narrated the whole book. Entertaining and fun to listen to him read lyrics by other writers.

Zimmerman Riffs on Song

Even though I'm a professional songwriter, I have never been a huge Bob Dylan fan. But while laid up in a cabin, with a busted foot and a bad cold, Bob's rap like readings were just the elixir I needed.
And a great cast of characters.
I listened to each song before the chapter started and it really brought it to life.
Loved!

Bob fans will like this

The breakdown of thoughts behind the songs gives insight to what some are thinking when listening or writing!