Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

Songs of House and Home

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

A special issue of Rolling Stone published in December of 2004 touted “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Aside from pandering to its list-obsessed readers—and feeding its own list obsession—the article provided a window into the imprecision of musical taste. For starters, it made no mention of criteria used to evaluate the songs (if there were any), nor did it explain what kinds of songs were up for consideration. A breakdown of selections shows some glaring biases: 94% of the songs came from North America and the United Kingdom, 69% of the songs were from the 1960s and 70s, “La Bamba” was the only song not in English, one instrumental was included (technically not a song), and only one was recorded before 1950 (sorry, Irving Berlin).

It is easy to quibble about the contents of the list: how it differs from “greatest songs” lists published elsewhere, how “all time” really means 1950s to the present, how commercial success skewed the selection process, how certain bands were overrepresented (the Beatles have twenty-three songs), how Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” made it to number one (after all, that song helped inspire the magazine’s name). Issues like these expose the arbitrariness of “greatness” and challenge the very pursuit of a pop culture canon. However, despite—or perhaps because of—its flaws, the list tells us much about the human relationship with song.

It is clear that the 500 songs had personal importance for those who selected them. Each song was a radio hit, meaning that they were “in the air” during the selectors’ teen and early adult yearsa period of tremendous physical and emotional change when surging hormones make everything seem monumental. Music heard at that time is both a comfort and an identity marker, and its significance is sealed for life. Thus, the abundance of songs from the 1960s and 70s suggests that most of the selectors were baby boomers. There were also a few older voters (seventy-two songs were from the 1950s), and a smattering of younger voters (eighty-two songs spanned the 1980s to early 2000s).

From this perspective, what constitutes the “best” arguably has more to do with ownership than with the music itself. To use a domestic analogy, it is the difference between a house and a home. A house is a building designed for human habitation. It can be attractive to our eyes and suitable to our needs; but because it is not our dwelling place, it is of minor consequence. Yet, if we were to move into that house and fill it with our furniture, knick-knacks, routines, and memories, it would become our home. Like the songs we cherish, our affection for it would make it the “best.”

This subjectivity is implied in the Rolling Stone article, which makes no attempt at outlining objective measurements. Although its title suggests definitiveness, it is basically a glorified opinion poll. No reader would agree with all of its contents or the order in which they appear. This is not a criticism. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that songs are important to everyone, and that we are all curators of our own lists.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Genres and Lyrics (Review Essay)

The Lyric Book: Complete Lyrics for Over 1000 Songs from Tin Pan Alley to Today, New York: Hal Leonard, 2001. 384 pp.

Daniel J. Levitin, The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, New York: Dutton, 2008. 354 pp.

Review Essay by Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Music scholarship in the twenty-first century has shined significant light on the indispensable roles of music in human life. In contrast to the dominant perception of music as entertainment—a view saturated with ethnocentrism and unsophistication—interdisciplinary allies have begun to see music’s ubiquity as a sign of its evolutionary necessity. The conclusions drawn by this group, made up of anthropologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and others, are not uniform and not uniformly convincing. But the track they’re on seems to be the right one, even if absolute claims about music’s origins would require a time machine to verify.

An enthusiastic representative of this “music is fundamental” group is McGill neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin. In his 2008 bestseller, The World in Six Songs, Levitin argues that six types of songs—friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love—have played a central role in facilitating the development of the human brain and human society. In his analysis, based on a lively mixture of scientific research and anecdotal findings, these song-types comprise the “soundtrack of civilization.” In every age, they have provided a medium for sharing information, strengthening bonds, asserting identities, imparting wisdom, and facilitating a host of other actions and attitudes that aided our evolution and define who we are today.

Reviews of Levitin’s theory and its supporting data have been mixed. While most admire his ambitious claims and appreciate their logical basis, some of his extrapolations have been called overreaching, esoteric, and difficult to demonstrate. His reliance on musical examples from his own catalogue of favorites (read: Caucasian American baby boomer) has added to the criticism, as has his nonchalant placement of the same song in multiple categories (e.g., “I Walk the Line” as a friendship, knowledge, and love song). Even so, Levitin has articulated a remarkably sturdy taxonomy of songs.

The cross-cultural ubiquity of the six song-types seems clear. Virtually every song one can think of fits into (at least) one of the categories, usually with ease. To be sure, this is partly because descriptive approaches are also constructive: when equipped with a set of qualities, we tend to identify those qualities in the things we encounter. We are, after all, the possessors of pattern-seeking brains. Consequently, the sometimes-fuzzy lines between types are ignored to preserve a broader picture.

Levitin’s arguments could have benefitted from a multicultural expansion of musical examples and the toning-down of some assertions. Then again, the book’s biographical vignettes and energetic storytelling help the reader relate to what could have been a dry and jargon-heavy scientific tome. Levitin encourages us to substitute his scenarios with our own life situations and musical favorites, and asks us to imagine our ancient ancestors using music in similar ways, adjusted for their own time and place.

Weaknesses in the evolutionary argument and the song schema itself do not invalidate Levitin’s work. If The World in Six Songs is not wholly convincing, it is at least more accurate than it is wrong.

To test this point, I applied Levitin’s six songs to The Lyric Book, a collection of 1,015 American popular song lyrics from Tin Pan Alley to the date of publication (2001). It is basically a fake book without the music, and is presumably meant for people who are training for a karaoke competition or who wish to settle a bet. The lyrics are pulled from a range of material, including but not limited to blues, early rock ‘n’ roll, jazz standards, country and western, R & B, soul, hip hop, classic rock, Broadway, disco, and bubblegum pop. All of the lyrics satisfy at least one of Levitin’s types, proving both the adeptness of his research and the power of pre-determined categories to define what one is looking for. (My own assessment is that it was mostly the former, though a few songs did have to be pushed and shoved into a category.)

Some words about The Lyric Book before delving into my findings. First, the good: In addition to a table of contents, the book contains an artist index (listing by performers), a songwriter index (listing by songwriters), and an index of songs from musicals, films and television. The bad: Although the lyrics are drawn from mainstream material, there is no preface or introduction explaining the rationale for what was included and what was not. It is also a “company book”: no compiler(s) or editor(s) are credited. As a result, it gives the impression of having been randomly selected and mechanically assembled.

There are some predictable offerings from the likes of Burt Bacharach, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, Lorenz Hart, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, and Richard Rogers. But there are just as many conspicuous absences. For example, of the artists included in LA Weekly’s list of “Top 20 Singer-Songwriters of All Time,” only six found their way into the book—and four of them with just a single song: David Bowie (“Space Oddity”), Johnny Cash (“I Walk the Line”), Bob Dylan (“Forever Young”), Willie Nelson (“Crazy”), Hank Williams (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and 2 others), and Stevie Wonder (“All in Love is Fair,” and 10 others). The missing singer-songwriters are Leonard Cohen, Robert Johnson, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton, Prince, Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Elliot Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, and Neil Young.

Despite these and other flaws (unfortunate typos, uneven genre representation, inconsistent alphabetizing, etc.), the book’s unsystematic nature makes it an excellent testing ground for Levitin’s classification. The 1,015 songs did indeed fit into the six types: friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love. Several dozen exhibited multiple themes (e.g., joy and religion, comfort and love, knowledge and friendship), but in each case one theme was deemed primary and the song was placed accordingly.

My examination of the 1,015 lyrics yielded the following:

24 are songs of friendship. These include battle/bonding songs (“We Will Rock You”), songs extolling friendship (“With a Little Help From My Friends”), and songs dedicated to friends (“You’re My Best Friend”).

67 are songs of joy. These comprise songs of carefree enjoyment (“I Get Around”), mindless dance songs (“Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”), joyful songs of home (“Deep in the Heart of Texas”), songs of life’s pleasures (“Sir Duke”), and “feel good” songs (“These Are the Best of Times”).

95 songs provide comfort. These are songs of perseverance (“Hit Me With Your Best Shot”), solace (“In My Room”), encouragement (“Pick Yourself Up”), and regrets (“Holding Back the Years”).

115 are knowledge songs, which consist of morality songs (“Colors of the Wind”), learning songs (“Do-Re-Mi”), story songs (“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”), and protest songs (“Power to the People”).

20 songs deal with religious themes, either with prayer (“God Bless the Child”), theological imagery (“Lost in the Stars”), biblical content (“Turn! Turn! Turn!”), or civil religion (“The Star Spangled Banner”).

694 are songs of love. Their topics include falling in love (“I Finally Found Someone”), staying in love (“Day by Day”), losing love (“I Fall to Pieces), never getting love (“I Can’t Make You Love Me”), the virtues of love (“All for Love”), and lust (“The Look of Love”).

The over-representation of love songs is not surprising given the content of The Lyric Book. The underrepresentation of friendship and religion songs is likewise understandable. If the book consisted of lyrics of another kind—say, folksongs or children’s songs—other categories would be more prominent. But, percentages aside, this exercise in organization highlights the validity of Levitin’s categories, both in addressing a wide assortment of songs, and in helping the cataloguer reduce songs to their basic themes. If American popular music is representative of music as a whole, then there really are six songs—six songs with many faces. And these songs resonate at the core of our species.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Economy of Notes

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Jean-Paul Sartre posed the following scenario: Imagine listening to a raw recording of everyday conversations transpiring in a foreign time and place. They begin mid-sentence, jump organically from topic to topic and come with no guidelines or commentary. Even if we could understand the language, much of the substance of the dialogue would be lost. The words would be laden with subtleties, references and turns of phrase natural to the speakers’ environment and experiences, but alien to our own. Context would be a matter of conjecture, as people generally avoid dwelling on the details of their surroundings or the larger conditions in which their discussions are taking place. Extraneous and unnecessary information is left out without conscious consideration. The actors simply know who they are, where they are and what they’re talking about. They intuitively favor an economy of language.

Sartre saw a parallel between such conversations and literature written in and about a given culture. Native readers do not require lengthy descriptions, meticulous word-pictures or fleshed-out narratives. As Sartre wrote: “[P]eople of a same period and collectivity, who have lived through the same events, who have raised or avoided the same questions, have the same taste in their mouth; they have the same complicity, and there are the same corpses among them. That is why it is not necessary to write so much; there are key-words.” But when their stories and ideas are told to an outside audience, many pages are needed to introduce history, outline customs, explain prejudices, chronicle social tensions, describe economic conditions and so on.

Something similar occurs in music. Like the direct language of everyday speech and the concision of certain time- and space-specific writings, music is able to communicate an abundance of information with minimal material. A brief melodic sequence, stylistic signature or pithy phrase can capture the ethos of the group or subgroup from which the music sprang and to which it is addressed. Its sound—and, in the case of song, its subject matter—encapsulates collective experiences, consolidates common concerns, addresses ubiquitous feelings, accentuates shared fondnesses and enfolds many layers of cultural expression.

Group-defining music is like a time capsule, gathering together tastes, struggles, longings, tendencies, aspirations and other particulars. Take the American baby boomer who nods knowingly to a Bob Dylan record, or the Yoruba of West Africa who understand the messages and milieu of their talking drums. Each time the music is played, its contents are spilled out. The insider knows precisely what it means; she is overtaken by a flood of familiar associations. For that person and others of her background and heritage, the music is an instant and unmistakable identity marker. It is history, memory, emotion, spirit, essence and conviction rolled into a sonic container.

This is partly why we are attracted to the music that attracts us: it is our music in a deep sense of the term. But it also accounts for why outsiders often have difficulty relating to or fully appreciating the music of others. For those who lived the stories and know the references, the music is a constant source of meaning and identification. Yet those unfamiliar with the music and its context can find it dated, irrelevant, uninteresting, unimportant, unapproachable or worse. And when an outsider desires to learn what the music recalls and represents, he needs the sort of informational and analytical framework insiders happily do without.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Is It Musical?

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-54) was among the first to propose that computer programs would someday simulate human creativity. He argued that the hardwiring of computers and human brains were essentially the same, and that the “thought processes” of both could be reduced to mechanical calculations. This concept of disembodied cognition gained enthusiastic support in the initial wake of the computer revolution. Among other things, it spurred predictions that programs would be able to compose pieces and improvise jazz in a way indistinguishable from human musicians. Some even anticipated a machine that would match Bach or Beethoven.

These conjectures failed to recognize the embodied nature of the musical arts. Phrasing is structured on patterns of breathing. Articulation and tone length are imitative of language. The functional morphology of hands informs the range of a musical line. The emotional mind directs melodic movement. Many of us intuitively discern human performances from computer-generated music, even when a digital creation uses samples from live instruments. Our humanity detects the unhumanity of the piece.

Computers cannot, by themselves, generate the musical in music. They may excel at translating a sequence of symbols into audible information, but they do not grasp or communicate structural or affective musical meanings. They produce precision without spirit.

In a similar fashion, human performers can be judged by their musicality, or the feeling they bring to a given piece. As listeners, we make connections between the music we hear and extra-musical images, ideas and sensations, such as drama, poetry and passions. If we do not sense these layers in a performance, we withhold the label of musical. An assiduous player can master instrumental technique and conquer challenging literature. But unless something of that person’s interior life is heard, the playing will come across as dull or dry. This is largely what sets impassioned artists like Jascha Heifetz apart from many other skilled musicians.

In contrast, popular singers often lack the dexterity and tone quality typically looked for in Western music. If assessed exclusively for their voices, they would be deemed mediocre or worse. However, they possess what might be called a musical soul. Their innate sense of sound—and their sense of self projected in that sound—is both palpable and seductive. Their instruments may not be conventionally beautiful and their music may not be objectively artful; but their presentation is thoroughly musical. Singers fitting this description include icons such as Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin.

Impressive range and technical acumen do not always amount to musical music. Meticulous performers who convey little emotion are akin to exacting computers: the notes are polished and the passages precise, yet the essence is wanting. In the end, it is difficult to articulate or quantify exactly what this essence is. But we know it when we feel it.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.