Bob Dylan – aka Robert Zimmerman – is 70 years old today. This has generated some press, especially the “top X songs” or whatever lists.

I rise to the challenge!

Here is CNN’s list of the Top 10 Dylan songs.

Here are my top Dylan songs, in no particular order, and I’m certain I’ve missed some. These are, to me, the best Dylan songs, not necessarily my favorites.

Whatever; lists are always fun/controversial.

Here we go:

• “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” – Best version (to me) is Live From the Gaslight: 1962. Live, when he was trying to get it right. (To me, he nails it.)
• “Like a Rolling Stone” – awesome electric Dylan, with lyrics that can cut glass:
  

  You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
  But you know you only used to get juiced in it
  And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
  And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
  You said you’d never compromise
  With the mystery tramp, but know you realize
  He’s not selling any alibis
  As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
  And say do you want to make a deal?

• “Positively Fourth Street” – again, electric poetry.
  

  Yes, I wish that for just one time
  You could stand inside my shoes
  You’d know what a drag it is
  To see you

• “Idiot Wind” – Yes, I like Blood on the Track‘s “Tangled Up in Blue” best, but “Idiot Wind” is an extension of “Like a Rolling Stone.” And that’s not a bad thing.
• “All Along the Watchtower” – so good that when Jimi Hendrix cut the definitive version of same, Dylan began mimicking Hendrix.
• “Blowing in the Wind” – not the greatest, but was on the lips of every folk singer in the 60s or 70s. Hell, it’s the anthem of a generation.
• “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding”) – when Dylan really got Kant/poetry into his recordings.
• “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” – Early political song; great apocalyptic poetry. Nuclear rain is going to fall.
• “Song to Woody” – From his first album, this song – that I’ve never heard on the radio – is important in that it really sets up where Dylan was at the time (moved from his native Minnesota to New York) and what he was trying to do (make it as a folk singer). It’s a nod to Woody Guthrie, as well as the other folk heroes that help shape Dylan.
  

  I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
  Walking a road other men have gone down
  I’m seeing a new world of people and things
  Hear paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
  […]
  Here’s to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
  And to all the good people that traveled with you
  Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
  That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

• “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” – Remember, rock and roll can be fun
  

  Well, they’ll stone you when you walk all alone.
  They’ll stone you when you are walking home.
  They’ll stone you and then say you are brave.
  They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave.
  But I would not feel so all alone,
  Everybody must get stoned.