Title: Nashville Skyline (1969)
Length: 26min, 46s
Number of songs: 10
Best tracks: Girl from the North Country, I Threw it All Away, Lay Lady Lay, Tell Me That it isn’t True
If I could choose just one track: I Threw it All Away
Freshlyworded rating: 8/10
While running for less than 27 minutes and including only 10 tracks, there is plenty to like about this folksy, country and blues-infused album that includes a collaboration with the great Johnny Cash.
The really noteworthy thing about Nashville Skyline is Dylan’s new singing voice, which is almost unrecognisable from his usually rough-edged and conversational tone that includes stretching of words and bending of syllables.
Instead, we hear Dylan as a melodic-sounding crooner, a style that does in fact suit a lot of the romantic and sentimental tracks on the album. In truth, I have heard this sweeter voice before, on the track “Lay, Lady Lay” which was part of the three-CD Biograph compilation that first got me hooked on Dylan. The song always struck me as a bit odd just because it didn’t sound like Dylan at all. I didn’t realise there was a whole set of tracks that he sings in this unusual style, until I listened to this album.
Not only is his voice different, but the songs themselves are more straightforward in composition, with a clean-cut 1950s or 1960s feel to them and are largely devoid of complex poetic imagery.
Who would have thought that someone who wrote lyrics like: “Once upon a time you dressed so fine/Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?” in ‘Like a Rolling Stone” would write a song like “I Threw it All Away” and lyrics like “Love is all there is, it makes the world go ’round” followed by “Love and only love, it can’t be denied”.
But the song has a raw honesty about it, and though the lines on paper appear cheesy and overly sentimental, it is actually a beautiful song (a new hidden gem for me) and my favourite track on the album.
I also really enjoyed Dylan’s duet with Johnny Cash, ‘Girl from the North Country’, which opens the album. When you think of great voices in modern music, Cash’s deep baritone is among the most distinctive and beautiful in the business. Dylan’s crooner voice combines well with Cash on this track, where the pair reminisce with a feeling of sadness and longing about a woman who “once was a true love of mine”.
An interesting inclusion on the album, is ‘Nashville Skyline Rag, a lively ragtime ditty without any words that has echoes of Dueling Banjos made famous in the movie Deliverance. It’s followed by “To Be Alone with You”, a simple, but catchy pop-like song about Dylan being with one he loves.
“Peggy Day” is straight out of the 1950s. It’s a playful song where Dylan sings of “wanting to spend the night with Peggy Day” and how “Peggy night’ makes his “future feel so bright”.
The most famous song on the album is the aforementioned “Lay Lady Lay” another love song that is slow and mesmeric (aided by a twanging steel guitar), with sexual undertones and he asks his love to spend the night in his “big brass bed”. It turned into a surprise hit I have learned, peaking at Number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969 and was a favourite track of Madonna.
“One More Night” is very much a country-style love song with Dylan lamenting about spending another night with the woman he loves and featuring the almost excruciating cliched line “Oh, I miss my darling so” alongside gospel undertones in the repeated phrase: “Tonight no light will shine on me.”
I really loved “Tell Me That It Isn’t True” a song about Dylan’s fears about losing the woman he loves to a dark and handsome rival and pleading with her tell to tell that it’s not true. It’s a catchy tune with a sweetness and tenderness to it.
The album ends with yet another love song. “Tonight I’ll be Staying Here with You” is about woman he so devoted to that he throws all his plans out the window to remain with her. Incorporating a lot of jazzy piano, it seems a fitting closing song, as if Dylan has learnt his lesson and is not going to blow his chance at love and romance this time.
