Musical Monday (#4)

I'm taking a different approach to today's Musical Monday, in part inspired by the approach taken in Melbourne Stories. Talking about specific bands you might not know isn't going to last me very long, I'm not indie enough to have a large and obscure record collection and I'd be pretty much dried up after Godspeed, You Black Emperor! -- even though I do still intend to write about their post-apocalyptic spaghetti western sound. Instead, I will this week -- and maybe in future -- base Musical Monday around songs I love.

This week; Bob Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue.

First of all what I love most about the song, is everything. Then what I next love about it is the narrative -- Dylan tells a complex story of love and loss over countless years and locations, with coincidences and betrayals all interwoven.

I am inspired by the lines near the beginning of the song:
"She was married when we first met; soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess, but I used a little too much force"

I imagine him helping her get out of a possibly abusive relationship -- and accidentally using "a little too much force" on her partner. Perhaps from there they can't be together, so they "split up on a dark sad night, both agreeing it was best".

The song seems to chart how the narrator travels and lives and they coincidentally meet over the years -- like how she was working in a "topless place" when he stops in for a drink, but the two of them aren't sure they recognise each other, and he almost leaves without talking to her.

It's a song about love, he meets various women over the years but there's this one he never forgets -- the song ends with him setting off, resolved to "get to her somehow" -- although there seems a melancholy to it, like he realises he might not reach her, and they always did see it "from a different point of view". Even if it's never explained what "it" is.

Musically, the song sounds like classic Dylan -- slow, simple and folky, with Dylan's trademark strangled singing.