If you want to make it as a singer, it is useful to be good looking. With the gift of looks, it is not necessary to be able to sing, you just need a modicum of talent at lip syncing and the ability to leap around looking like a dick. Witness the majority of boy and girl bands of the last fifteen years.
With an acceptable singing voice and good looks, the world of entertainment is your whore oyster. Beyonce is an example, as is that annoying lump of grease called Enrique Iglesias.
But what if your singing voice is so bad you would be thrown out of a Korean Karaoke bar, and you look like a partially decomposed trout? Then you need to be capable of creating lyrics that burn. Poetry that means many things to many people. Words that influence lives. Then you might be called Bob Dylan.
If you are of my vintage, then Dylan probably meant something to you at some point. Considering suicide to the accompaniment of Desolation Row, trying to sing along to Subterranean Homesick Blues without stumbling over the words, becoming a feeble revolutionary to Masters of War; mainly just luxuriating in the wonderful obscurity of his lyrics.
Personally, I think he has been going downhill since Blood on the Tracks, and so it was a surprise to see his latest album, Together Through Life, topping the charts. I had to check it out so I “acquired” it. Oh dear.
First of all, and worst of all, the lyrics: crass and predictable. The music: countrified blues; no doubt capably played but it’s enough to wish he had stayed acoustic. Finally, the famously damaged voice is now damaged beyond repair and sounds like a suspect bag of shrapnel mixed with cornflakes. The whole, well if it didn’t have his name of on the cover it would never have been released. Summary: dire and to be avoided.
Fortunately there is another candidate in the “can’t sing but can write lyrics” category who has come along and rescued the genre. Ladies and gentleman, please lock up your daughters, I give you Leonard Cohen.
Cohen is of the same vintage as Dylan, and similarly revered for his wordsmithing, if not his singing which may not have much range, but certainly has depth. He has a bit of a reputation for misery, songs to top yourself to.
Which makes the newly released Live in London DVD something of a revelation. Sparkling of eye, sprightly of step, and probably erect of member when flirting with the backing singers; Cohen smiles and charms his way through two hours of classics with enthusiasm and humour. Previously sombre offerings are uplifted, courtesy of Cohen’s sense of fun and an accomplished band. The old goat’s obsession with sex, failed relationships, death and religion remain an invigorating mix; astonishing that he can give them such life and passion at his age (“I was last here 14 years ago. I was 60 then, just a kid with a crazy dream”).
Just don’t put him in front of Beyonce, or behind Enrique.