Is Taylor Swift the new Bob Dylan

This article was last updated on May 25, 2022

Canada: Free $30 Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Free $30 Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…When Taylor Swift sang “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” at the NRJ Music Awards she was just following Bob Dylan

Taylor Swift sings We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together at NRJ Awards

Some critics pick at the Pop Country singer Taylor Swift for writing songs like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together“, sung recently at the NRJ Music Awards.

Taylor Swift’s song is a firm put-down of an ex-lover. The song is no worse than Bob Dylan’s many songs that dismiss former lovers like he did in “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.” 

Video: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together by Taylor Swift at NRJ Awards

Taylor Swift has written a few put-down songs which give her lots of fan and media attention. The never-ending Taylor Swift story is who is she dating and what putdown song will be next.

There’s a long tradition of that kind of song. They are probably a therapeutic creative outlet. Certainly it’s better than stalking.

In Taylor Swift’s song, she tells the guy off for ignoring her, picking fights and personal criticism. Sounds like the normal way relationships blow up.

“I’m really gonna miss you picking fights
And me falling for it screaming that I’m right
And you would hide away and find your peace of mind
With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine

Ooh, you called me up again tonight
But ooh, this time I’m telling you, I’m telling you
We are never, ever, ever getting back together” (copyright Taylor Swift, Max Martin and Shellback.)

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In “Don’t Think Twice” Bob Dylan blames his lover, said to be Suze Rotolo, for the breakup.  Rotolo took a breather from the relationship by travelling on a slow boat to Italy. Of course, relationships are complicated and failure is hardly a one way street.

In ”Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, Dylan’s put-down song, the blame is all on the lover saying she “kinda wasted my precious time”.

“Look out your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m traveling on…
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right. (words copyright Bob Dylan)

Twenty years later Dylan apologized for the song saying, “I must have been a real schmuck to write that. I look back at that particular one and say, of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.” (Wikipedia)

Not surprisingly, Dylan’s agents hunt down YouTube versions of him singing “Don’t Think Twice” and get them deleted.


Video: Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right by Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton

Maybe that’s the lesson for Taylor Swift. Sometimes it pays to just move on and not profit from affairs of the heart.

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8 Comments

  1. No, nothing Taylor Swift has done is even close to what Bob Dylan has done, sorry.
    Writing repetitive pop songs for 12 year old girls can not in any way be compared to Bob Dylan.
    Bob Dylan’s song of love and lost love were about adult relationships among adults! They were not about corny,predictable childhood crushes.

    The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was Dylan’s second album. It went Platinum and is now ranked on Rolling Stones list of 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2002, Freewheelin’ was one of the first 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
    The album features the Dylan song “Blowin’ In The Wind” it was ranked #14 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. And this was only the beginning! Dylan followed with what? 12 US Gold Records 8 US Platinum Records and 3 double platinum records in the US. He had the same success overseas where he got Gold and Platinum records from UK,Australia and Canada. Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Like A Rolling Stone” as the #1 song of all time a few years ago!

    Recordings of Bob Dylan were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have “qualitative or historical significance.”
    Year comment_content_author_url Genre Label Year Inducted
    1963 “Blowin’ in the Wind” Folk (Single) Columbia 1994
    1965 “Like a Rolling Stone” Rock (Single) Columbia 1998
    1966 Blonde on Blonde Rock (Album) Columbia 1999
    1965 “Mr. Tambourine Man” Rock (Track) Columbia 2002
    1965 Highway 61 Revisited Rock (Album) Columbia 2002
    1965 Bringing It All Back Home Rock (Album) Columbia 2006

    The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Bob Dylan as Performer in 1988[2] and listed five songs by Bob Dylan of the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll.[3]
    Year comment_content_author_url
    1963 “Blowin’ in the Wind”
    1963 “The Times They Are a-Changin’”
    1965 “Like a Rolling Stone”
    1965 “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
    1975 “Tangled Up in Blue”

    2000 Academy Award for Best Original Song “Things Have Changed” from Wonder Boys

    Year comment_content_author_url Results
    1963 Tom Paine Award Honors
    1970 Princeton University, New Jersey Honorary Doctorate of Music
    1982 Songwriters Hall of Fame Inducted
    1990 Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres Honors
    1997 Kennedy Center Honors[5] Honors
    1997 The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Recipient
    2000 Polar Music Prize Winner
    2002 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Inducted
    2004 St. Andrews University, Scotland[6] Honorary Doctorate of Music
    2007 Prince of Asturias Awards Winner
    2008 Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards[7] Winner
    2009 National Medal of Arts[8] Honors
    2012 Prescomment_IDential Medal of Freedom Recipient

    • I beg to differ. Suze Rotolo was a teenager when she dated Dylan who was in his twenties. I do think Dylan style is more complex and I admire his work but he was sometimes petty and childish handling his personal life, he was more misterious about it and didn’t have paparazzi and socia media all the time.

  2. Dylan’s schmuck comment_content was about a song called “Ballad in Plain D.” The article started out pretty good and then tailspins into twisted facts and logic by the end.

    • Yes, I also read Dylan’s remarks that he felt  he was a schmuck   to write Ballad in Plain D. It’s a nasty rehash  of his contempt for and fight with Suze Rotolo’s sister ( granted that we can’t really know how much any Dylan song is about a specific personal experience). 

      When I listen again to Don’t Think Twice, I hear the love in the intricate, delicate guitar playing underlying the dismissive words. I love Dylan’s work, but I think it was Suze who gave Dylan her heart, but Dylan wanted her soul. The reverse of the ” I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul” line. He didn’t want her to even take one art course – she was supposed to dedicate every moment of her life to him- while he fooled around on the road. Great artist, difficult man. 

  3. Give me a break! You are kcomment_IDding, correct? To compare the two is completely rcomment_IDiculous. Also to clarify, authorities pulls unauthorized performances and/or recordings of Dylan’s entire COPYRIGHTED output for which he receives no compensation online, not just “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” That statement is flat-out misleading. Dylan will go down in American popular music — and literature — as one of the greatest wordsmiths of our time. Swift, mere statistics in the music industry.

  4. Bob Dylan is not just a singer, he is the finest living writer in the English language. If you like Taylor Swift, fine for you. But don’t pollute the internet with childish, foolish comparisons.

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