Dylan posted the above on Instagram yesterday (my son Simon Vozick-Levinson alerted me to it this morning). On Instagram and Reddit, and probably in other places, people are speculating that if Dylan did write it, he used AI to write it. I’m no expert on AI, but I’ve been listening to Dylan’s lyrics since the 1960s, and the excerpt he posted certainly seems consonant with the style and content of his lyrics.
Lyrics often repeat ideas and feelings — indeed, that’s what choruses explicitly do. And the ideas and emotion presented in this excerpt feel like a lyric — a song without music, lamenting, protesting, objecting to the danger, the destruction of our democracy that we see happening all around us, every day. I’m glad to see a man who actually won the Nobel Peace prize come out and assess this, decry this, in his own inimitable way.
His novel/lyric aim in particular at universities who acquiesce, crumble under the pressure of the Trump administration and his allies. I’m looking at you, Columbia University.
And, by the way, Dylan’s no stranger to science fiction. His Frankenstein-like song, "My Own Version of You" in his Rough and Rowdy Ways LP in 2020, is a funny, great little piece of science fiction, in one of his best albums. We the people who believe in freedom and democracy need all the help we can get in these desperate days, and it’s welcome indeed to have Dylan stepping up and in any way he can.
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