Poetic galvanizers behind Bob Dylan songs are getting the big ugly axe as the man, himself, has to lay off several workers from his "lyric assembly line." In order to maximize profits and yield higher margins, Dylan must restructure his wordsmiths to form a more streamlined unit.
Laborers have worked on Dylan albums for 50 years and now are in financial ruin as an effect of corporate cost-cutting. Dylan's estate is in shambles.
Honestly, could you imagine?
While The Onion remains the finest source for satire on all levels, the point their article playfully makes actually carries some weight. As the music industry becomes more saturated and even more digitized, songwriting, at this point in recorded time, is essentially an arm's race: fitter, happier and more productive.
For those deeper songs honing in on more impactful lyric writing, the prolificacy of pop trash reaching the airwaves is staggering and unremitting.
The Onion has dutifully reframed the implications of the Tambourine Man's music in contemporary terms, striking a very real chord with Dylanologists of every stripe.
"The simple fact is that today's industry is moving away from labor-intensive songwriting by skilled workers, and toward a cheaper, quicker, more mechanized process, and we have to adapt," said fake representative "Mark Valentine."
The harsh truth is that most listeners today don't want to listen--and I mean really listen--so much as they want a tune every now and then.
For the price of a song, no less.
