Monday, August 17, 2015

Sugar Baby

You're fine without me.
Why bother reuniting?
I don't see the point.

Another fine song in the ever-growing catalogue of Bob Dylan songs about a lost lover going down the road who probably should just keep moving because there's no sense in getting back together -- even if it's something they want. This doleful, stark song closes the 2001 album "Love and Theft." It's notable to me for being yet another song in his later catalogue that is pretty open about its misogyny. I can't tell if that's an honest feeling or a narrative device for someone who's supposed to be the "Singer" and not Dylan. It's also another in many of his recent songs in which he sings about bright sunshine and light, and how he needs to turn his back to it because it's too intense.

1. Back to the sun. Sometimes you can't come back from what you've done. Sometimes people push it too far. You'll see that someday too.
2. "You went years without me, might as well keep going now."
3. "Some of these memories you can learn to live with, and some of them you can't."
4. "There ain't no limit to the amount of trouble women bring. Love is pleasing, love is teasing, love's not an evil thing."
5. Life seems like a joke. Happiness comes and goes just like that. It could happen at any time. "Try to make things better for someone, sometimes, you just end up making it a thousand times worse."
6. He is surely not your only heartbreak. And here, a reference to a Frank Sinatra song, "You got a way of tearing the world apart. Love, see what you done. Just as sure as we're living, just as sure as you're born. Look up, look up -- seek your maker -- 'fore Gabriel blows his horn."






1 comment:

  1. Hello there Robert, Thank you for posting this analysis of a song from Bob Dylan's Music Box: http://thebobdylanproject.com/Song/id/603/Sugar-Baby Come and join us inside and listen to every song composed, recorded or performed by Bob Dylan, plus all the great covers streaming on YouTube, Spotify, Deezer and SoundCloud plus so much more... including this link.

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