Forget about Today: Bob Dylan's Genius for (Re)invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution

Miller, Elizabeth

doi:10.1080/03007766.2013.796808

Cited by 1 publication

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“…In general, Dylan has been qualified as a changing artist, characterized by his evolution through various phases throughout his career, a constant change in musical style, known for refusing to conform to a prescribed identity and refusing to be artistically confined into one category (Miller, 2014;Wilentz, 2010; This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a sense, perhaps this may indicate that he is successful in remaining original and undefined as an artist. After all, Dylan was known to consciously refuse to conform to a prescribed identity throughout his career and to contest what others expected of him to produce an original artistic output like no other (Miller, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, Petrie et al (2008) found a decrease in the cognitive complexity of the Beatles’ lyrics. In sum, Dylan was already known for having a unique musical and thematic evolution in his music (Bell, 2000; Miller, 2014; Whissell, 2008), which seems to be coupled with an increase in the cognitive complexity of his lyrics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, Dylan has been qualified as a changing artist, characterized by his evolution through various phases throughout his career, a constant change in musical style, known for refusing to conform to a prescribed identity and refusing to be artistically confined into one category (Miller, 2014; Wilentz, 2010; Whissell, 2008). Our study provides a more detailed description of exactly how Dylan’s lyrics changed throughout his career using a unique combination of LIWC analysis and a qualitative approach.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Like a rolling stone: A mixed-methods approach to linguistic analysis of Bob Dylan’s lyrics.

Czechowski

Miranda

Sylvestre

2016

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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The work of American musician and songwriter Bob Dylan is an intriguing theme of research for the social psychology of music because his songs are widely believed to have reflected and influenced social movements. The objective of this mixed-methods study was to analyze the content of Dylan's song lyrics from his 29 original studio albums , selecting only songs written by him (n ϭ 241) in order to determine whether and how they evolved over the course of 50 years of his career. First, the text analysis software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2007; Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) was used to perform a quantitative analysis of song lyrics. Second, a general inductive method was used to perform a qualitative analysis of Dylan's work. Quantitative results showed that the most pronounced changes in Dylan's lyrics throughout his career included an increase in words indicative of cognitive complexity, religious content, and collective focus, but also a decrease in words indicative of social referents. Qualitative analysis revealed that Dylan's song lyrics gravitated around social themes that primarily consisted of hardships, romance, religion, family, politics and law, as well as oppression. Findings are discussed within Dylan's musical work and biography, and provide theoretical and empirical directions for future research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, Dylan has been qualified as a changing artist, characterized by his evolution through various phases throughout his career, a constant change in musical style, known for refusing to conform to a prescribed identity and refusing to be artistically confined into one category (Miller, 2014; Wilentz, 2010; Whissell, 2008). Our study provides a more detailed description of exactly how Dylan’s lyrics changed throughout his career using a unique combination of LIWC analysis and a qualitative approach.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations