![tangled up in blue lyrics tangled up in blue lyrics](http://cdn130.picsart.com/269603854019201.jpg)
She was standing there in back of my chairĪnd then the musical surprise. Now he finds her again – or is it her? – has the prediction come true? – or is it once more the night playing tricks as Johanna, Louise and Little Boy Lost found? Is this really the same woman, with them each playing a new game? The past was close behind… it is always there, inside us, directing us, telling us what we have been and what we are. What an astounding, classic Dylan two lines: We are never sure what actually happened, we just know the bits that our memory pushes forward, and from this we recreate our own story.īut she never escaped my mind, and I just grew The break up happens, the singer moves on to casual work, the combination of the detail and the generality of his life carrying him, and the music forwards. We keep on keeping on, right from the start. These lines are so simple, and yet the combination of a generality (a “dark sad night”) and the specific promise of meeting again in an unknown, unpredictable future give the song a powerful drive forward. The singer thinks back to the family disapproval, what with the imbalance of the family fortunes, and it is suggested the woman being married, followed by the inevitable split, and the belief they would come back together. The song starts with a setting of the scene in which the singer looks back to the early days of the relationship, but also sets the pattern for the last five lines being more contemporary (sometimes!) Of course in writing such a song some stability is needed to stop the whole piece unravelling, and here this is done with the last five lines of each verse, in which the percussion suddenly becomes much more dominant, and the chord changes become much more definite: V, VI, I, IV a sequence which is repeated before the remarkable drawing together of everything with the flattened 7th, IV and I, bringing us back to base – here and now, before we go again into an uncertain future… or is it the past? When he hit on that rotating alternation he must have known he had what he wanted and needed to make the song flow. Lyrics and music in total unity, while time is out of joint – a superb concept. We are there (the tonic) but we aren’t (flattened 7th). In musical terms we have the tonic (I) alternating with a chord of the flattened 7th but with the tonic still in place.
![tangled up in blue lyrics tangled up in blue lyrics](https://static2.lot-art.com/public/upl/48/Bob-Dylan_1579909512_9435.jpg)
The way that Dylan conveys yesterday, today and tomorrow in the music is through the rotating two chords that open each verse and return and return and return. Never has the effect been more controlled or more effective – because this is what the song is the story of a collapsing glissando. What seems so attractive to the listener hearing this as a song, rather than a poem set to music, is the integration of Dylan’s singing mixed with occasional declamation, with that trade mark last note of the line in a collapsing glissando. So said Dylan of this song, and to add to the mix he has performed and recorded many different versions: this review is from the Blood on the Tracks album, although Dylan has said that others are better. “You’ve got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there’s very little you can’t imagine not happening”.
![tangled up in blue lyrics tangled up in blue lyrics](https://s3.amazonaws.com/halleonard-pagepreviews/HL_DDS_1059374FJAm18pj3E.png)
For the review of the completely revised “Real Live” version please see hereġ0 August 2017: link to live version video added at end of the review.ġ8 August 2017: link to New York Sessions recording of the song add at the end. This review (updated 10 August 2017) is of the original album version of “Tangled”.