Retold, resung, remixed

I used to not like Bob Dylan.¹ Part of this is because the first song I heard of his, that I knew was his, was “Lay Lady Lay.” I didn’t like his voice, and was young enough to find it annoying that a man was singing an entire song begging a woman to have sex with him, a shocking topic indeed.

The first Dylan song I fell in love with, I didn’t realize for years was actually a Dylan song. It was Sophie B. Hawkins’s cover of “I Want You.” Though, by the time I heard it, I was old enough to think a woman singing a song about yearning like that was very sexy indeed.

At this point, you may be wondering if I have changed the theme of this newsletter, or if this is like the year Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and we’re going to talk about his lyrics or him as a writer. But no, not quite.