Make You Feel My Love
- Þorkell Daníel Jónsson
- Jan 28, 2018
- 2 min read
Song and Lyrics: Bob Dylan
In 1997, at the age of 56, Bob Dylan released Time Out of Mind. The album is extremely good. It won three Grammy Awards and put Dylan back on the map. Critics did not find much to critic on the album except most notably track number nine. A low-key, simple, old-fashioned love song, Make you feel my love.
Critics' analyses can hardly be regarded as the sacred truth. Their speculations are not necessarily in line with what the listeners are thinking. The listeners listen to music to be impressed. This is so much true of song number nine on this great album. No song on the album has been as successful, as the soforng Make you feel my love. A number of musicians do not agree with the critics and made their own version of it. That group includes no less notable performers than Billy Joel, Adele, Garth Brooks, Bryan Ferry and Kelly Clarkson.
The list of people who have covered the song is endless. However, it did not reach my ears until Sara Pétursdóttir performed it brilliantly in a high school singing competition in 2014. Shortly thereafter, my daughter played a piano version of the song at her music school. Then I thought I'd see if I could find arrangements of the song for fingerstyle guitar. I found out that there is no shortage of arrangements. A myriad of people have struggled to play it and published it online. I chose an arrangement by Ulli Boegerhausen, wrote it up, and learned to play it as you can hear in the video below. Strictly speaking, I shouldn't include the arrangement in this article, but since it is easily available widely on the web. I guess my notes are something different from the original ones because when I wrote them up I didn't use Boegerhausen's notes and probably changed something here and there.
When discussing a song by Dylan, you have to pay notice to the lyrics. The lyrics to the song "Make you feel my love" are not complicated. It's about love, the sacrifices the narrator is willing to make for it, and the longing for love to be reciprocated. As in most of Dylan's lyrics, there are quite a few references in it suggesting that it is more intricate than you might think at first. Several people have pointed out that there are strong references to the Bible in the text and that the narrator is Jesus Christ. Others have pointed out that the text revolves around the narrator's poor state of mind and even stems from Dylan´s divorce a few years earlier. We can speculate enlessly about the lyrics, let´s just keep in mind what Dylan himself said.: „The meaning of the lyrics changes as time goes on. People can put different meanings into the lyrics depending on the situation they are in. They are multilayered."
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