Word: songs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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CLEAR AND STRONG, a trumpet sings out above the back-up instruments as the song opens. The rhythm seems familiar enough-just can't quite place it. Someone turns up the volume on the radio as guesses about the song fly about the car. With the first word sung, everyone knows the answer but looks no less puzzled because, well, that's Bob Dylan singing, and what the hell is he doing with a trumpet player and three smooth-singing female background vocalists in his group...
...song "Is Your Love In Vain" and the rest of Dylan's recently released Street Legal album rekindle the cries that he has sold out and, worse, sold out to pop. The critics-confident they finally have the smoking gun-begin once again to close in on Dylan; but as the trial opens the only one missing from the scene is the Jack of Hearts himself. Dylan, it seems, has slipped away by declaring himself an "entertainer" and by developing a style to prove it; he shrugs off criticism as if those who simply view him as a poet-prophet...
...Your Love in Vain?" is the most popular song on the album-and the most mediocre. The trumpet-heralded introduction sounds smooth, all right, but the pastiche of instrumentals, background vocals and Dylan's lyrics fails to gel. The instrumentals and female vocalists in the chorus only serve to take away what power the lyrics have; in addition, the words themselves are not above suspicion, with lines like "All right, I'll take a chance, I'll fall in love with you" and the chorus "Are you going to risk it all, or is your love in vain?" Smooth...
...Where Are You Tonight," the "new" Dylan strikes his most attractive pose. The song captures that wild feeling of America at night, the America of Thomas Wolfe and Jack Kerouac. The lean background vocals, snappy rhythm and fine lyrics about two-bit criminals and their women ("Her father emphasized, you got to be more than street-wise") work together to make "Where Are You Tonight?" perhaps the most polished song Dylan has written since Tangled up in Blue...
...Think" Dylan is up to his old tricks, making lengthy alliterative lists of words and then complaining (mocking?) that there's no time to think. The short, repetitive rhythm matches the lyrics well and the sparring use of background singers livens up what might otherwise be an oppressively boring song...