|
I think "Like a Rolling Stone" is a rock song. Not a folk song. I think it was written to be, rather explicitly, not a folk song. It's even got a little swagger to it. Listen to it Live at Royal Albert Hall performance, and tell me it doesn't rock.
I guess "A Day in the Life" might not be a ROCK song, but it's also not a pop song. It's a an experimental blending, and creation, of gentes. It plants one foot in the past and a foot in the future, but it's center always seems to be in the present, even today. It eats "Stairway to Heaven" for breakfast and then shits it back out and leaves it burning on your principals doorstep. Hard to think of a more subversive mainstream song on a major album in that era. I think it qualifies as rock.
I refuse to go by theory when it comes to stuff like this. "Rock is 4/4 time and blah blah blah." I think rock is whatever rock spat out st a given moment, so "Love Will Year us Apart" is rock. "Like a Rolling Stone" is rock. "Smells like Teen Spirit" is rock. "Paranoid Android" is rock.
Just like "Hey Ya" is hip-hop even though it's really not in a technical sense. Same with innumerable Kanye songs, and, indeed, Young Thug songs. They're not hip-hop, but hip-hop had a seizure and vomited things like "Runaway" and "Who Will Survive in America," and "Hey Ya" and Death Grips and the world is a better place for it. Sometimes genres are defined and even kept alive/rejuvenated by weird-ass moments that kinda defy all expectation about what the genre means. And in that sense, "A Day in the Life" is definitively rock n' roll by virtue of how much it fucked rock n' roll in the brain.
You know what I mean, I'm sure.
Also, thanks for acknowledging that Kanye has some integrity as an artist. At least in the way we care about ("we" meaning not just you and I, but folks who define great artists by how little of a fuck they give about maintaining the status quo. Sonic Youth fans. Punk fans, etc.) even if you never like a single song of his, it's nice to hear you say that you respect him a little.
Also, I don't actually think "Satisfaction" is better than "Johnny B. Goode." The Stones have a ton of songs that are so much better than that, and I've always found it to be quite overrated.
Anyhoo... whatevs.
|