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| "My Own Version of You" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Bob Dylan | |
| from the album Rough and Rowdy Ways | |
| Released | June 19, 2020 |
| Recorded | January-February, 2020 |
| Studio | Sound City Studios |
| Genre | Folk |
| Length | 6:41 |
| Label | Columbia |
| Songwriter(s) | Bob Dylan |
| Producer(s) | None listed |
"My Own Version of You" is a song written and performed by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and released as the third track on his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways. Inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, this darkly comical song features a narrator who describes bringing "someone to life" using the body parts of disparate corpses in what has been widely interpreted as an elaborate metaphor for the songwriting process.
Themes
The song's lyrics prominently feature gothic-horror imagery, which can be found to a lesser extent on other tracks on Rough and Rowdy Ways (including "I Contain Multitudes", which references the story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, and "Murder Most Foul", which alludes to the movies The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man and A Nightmare on Elm Street). A number of lyrics in "My Own Version of You" explicitly reference Frankenstein, including the opening verse ("I've been visiting morgues and monasteries / Looking for the necessary body parts") as well as lines about studying "Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind" and needing "one strike of lightning" and a "blast of 'lectricity that runs at top speed" in order to bring the song's creature, the "you" of the title, to life.
A number of critics see the notion of a mad-scientist narrator stitching together "body parts" in order to create new life as analogous to the way Dylan, as writer, stitches together lines from diverse sources (e.g., songs, poems, movie dialogue, etc.) in order to bring a song to life. Chief among these critics is Dylan scholar Laura Tenschert who posits "My Own Version of You" as part of a diptych of songs, along with "Mother of Muses", that explore the "myth and mystery of creation" on Rough and Rowdy Ways. Tenschert also considers that the line "I want to do things for the benefit of all mankind" may be a cheeky reference to Dylan's having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016: Alfred Nobel established the prize when he stated in his will that the remainder of his estate should be used to endow "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”.
Critical reception
Some critics have noted that, even apart from the lyric, the music to "My Own Version of You" is "spooky". This is due primarily to Tony Garnier's descending bass line and a pedal-steel guitar part by Donnie Herron that resembles the sound of the theremin parts frequently heard on science-fiction and horror-movie soundtracks. The song's overall musical atmosphere has also been compared to that of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956 novelty-horror single "I Put a Spell on You".
Sam Sodomsky, writing in Pitchfork, called the song a "macabre narrative" in which Dylan sings "about playing god as he scavenges through morgues and cemeteries to reanimate a few notable corpses and absorb their knowledge...slapstick horror rendered as existential comedy." Writing in Rolling Stone, critic Rob Sheffield described Dylan's vocal performance on the track as "marvelously nimble and delicate" as he sings the song's humorous lyrics. Critic Sanjoy Narayan, who hailed Rough and Rowdy Ways as a "masterpiece", cited "My Own Version of You" as the one song "that really stood out" to him on the album.
Cultural references
Two of the song's lyrics reference famous lines in plays by William Shakespeare: "Well, it must be the winter of my discontent" paraphrases the opening line of Richard III and "Tell me what it means / To be or not to be" alludes to the most well-known line in Hamlet.
"I'll take the Scarface Pacino and the Godfather Brando / Mix 'em up in a tank and get a robot commando" refers to two of the most famous performances by American "Method" actors Al Pacino and Marlon Brando.
A line about getting "gunpowder from ice" is a reference to Chapter 5 of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
The line "Can you help me walk that moonlight mile?" is likely a reference to the 1971 song "Moonlight Mile" by The Rolling Stones (who are also referenced as "them British bad boys" on the Rough and Rowdy Ways track "I Contain Multitudes").
As in "Goodbye Jimmy Reed", the line "You can bring it to Saint Peter, you can bring it to Jerome" humorously juxtaposes the sacred and the secular by referencing an apostle of Jesus alongside Bo Diddley's maracas player.
References
- "Chapter 2: The Other Side Of The Coin - The Myth and Mystery of Creation on Rough And Rowdy Ways". Definitely Dylan. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "My own version of you: Bob Dylan's revenge; Bob's desire | Untold Dylan". Retrieved February 15, 2021.
- "Chapter 4". www.cliffsnotes.com. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Chapter 6". www.cliffsnotes.com. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Chapter 2". www.cliffsnotes.com. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Chapter 2: The Other Side Of The Coin - The Myth and Mystery of Creation on Rough And Rowdy Ways". Definitely Dylan. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Alfred Nobel's will". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways". Light On Dark Water. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
- "BOB DYLAN CONFRONTS HIS OWN LEGACY ON "ROUGH AND ROWDY WAYS"". BOB DYLAN CONFRONTS HIS OWN LEGACY ON “ROUGH AND ROWDY WAYS”. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
- "SoundStage! Access | SoundStageAccess.com (GoodSound.com) - Bob Dylan: "Rough and Rowdy Ways"". www.soundstageaccess.com. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Themes From a Summer Piece". Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways". Pitchfork. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- Sheffield, Rob; Sheffield, Rob (June 15, 2020). "Bob Dylan Has Given Us One of His Most Timely Albums Ever With 'Rough and Rowdy Ways'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- Narayan, Sanjoy (June 26, 2020). "Opinion | Bob Dylan's rough and rowdy return". mint. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "A Short Analysis of Richard III's 'Now is the winter of our discontent' speech". Interesting Literature. November 23, 2020. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Act 3, Scene 1 - Video Note: "To be, or not to be"". myShakespeare. August 14, 2016. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "Richard Thomas, "And I Crossed the Rubic". mysite. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- Platinum, Iris (August 10, 2020). "My Own Version of You: Analysis:". Medium. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- "My own version of you: Bob Dylan's revenge; Bob's desire | Untold Dylan". Retrieved February 16, 2021.
