Blonde on Blonde has been my favorite Dylan album for at least five years now and it was only on my latest listen to the track "Temporary Like Achilles" that I realized it might be the most blatantly sexual song he's ever written. He's "looking at her second door" and "kneeling neath her ceiling" because he's giving oral sex and the lyrics "trying to read you poetry but I'm helpless like a rich mans child" is implying it's hard to dirty talk when you are eating pussy. Other lyrics such as "lean into your hallway, lean against your velvet door" or "he's pointing to the sky" require no explanation. Bob is a massive horndog and there are so many metaphors he uses that make much more sense when you think of them in a sexual context.
I think of anyone mentioned here, Napoleon has the strongest claim to being on Alexanders level in terms of his impact on history and overall military skill. He changed the face of warfare and won more battles than anyone else. But here's the thing, Napoleon ultimately made colossal blunders that led to his downfall and when you examine his military career, you find he had blindspots that Alexander didn't. Napoleon was straight up incompetent in his understanding of naval warfare, unlike Alexander who made brilliant use of naval elements during the Siege of Tyre. Napoleon abandoned his army two times in Egypt and Russia, unlike Alexander who always led from the front and was there sharing in the hardships of his men every step of the way. Napoleon's greatest victory at Austerlizt had a spectacular impact in the short term but mattered little in the end, unlike Alexander's at Gaugamela that put an end to the greatest empire history had ever seen up to that point. If Napoleon wins at Waterloo, nothing changes and he still loses the war, if Alexander had lived longer, the whole course of human history could look different.
You could argue that Hannibal was on Alexander's level as a tactician but that's it. He didn't have the same impact on history, he didn't triumph in such a wide array of circumstances and climates, he was very poor at conducting sieges compared to Alexander and like Napoleon, he ultimately lost, though in his case I would argue it has more to do with the inevitablity of Roman power than self inflicted blunders like Napoleon's.
Caesar was undoubtedly a cunning general and skilled politician but I think it's fair to say he was more of a man navigating the climate around him rather than knowingly changing history in his own mind. It's not to say he didn't have an impact or influence future events though and Alesia is a stunning military victory.
Conclusion
No matter how you look at it, Alexander has been famous much longer than Napoleon, Hannibal or Caesar. Each one of them ranked Alexander ahead of themselves in the standing of military commander. Napoleon's empire collapsed in his own lifetime, Caesar helped bring about the end of a republic that was all but dead anyway and Hannibal was just a military commander. Alexander's early death fractured the unity of his empire but the successor states endured for centuries and him living longer means world history could look very different. Napoleon read the campaigns of Alexander and launched a failed invasion of Egypt partially to emulate Alexander. Hannibal ranked Alexander ahead of himself in his conversation with Scipio and Caesar wept at Alexander's statue because he had not achieved anything at an age when Alexander was ruling the known world. Alexander's only hero was Achilles, a demigod of mythology that never existed.
I have my own thoughts on this topic but I'm curious what this sub thinks. Are "great men" the true movers and shakers of historical events and progress or are they merely the biproduct of larger events and shifts in society?
I just wanna specify that I am not a Lady Gaga hater, she is a generational live performer with some very iconic hits and two albums I consider to be pop classics, The Fame Monster and Born This Way. That being said, she has this reputation as some boundary pushing artist and master of high art fashion and reinvention, but when you actually listen to a lot of her discography you find it's just typical pop sounds dressed up with a bit of theatrics and that Gaga was usually a follower of musical trends rather than setting them.
The Fame was deeply rooted in the electropop and synth-pop boom of the late 2000s, it's nothing groundbreaking and her breakout hit "Just Dance" features the typical tacked on rap feature of the time. TFM and Born This Way are great albums and the closest she came to forging a sound that was uniquely her but even then they are far from boundary pushing or avant-guard. ARTPOP got too much hate but it's just basic synth-pop and edm fused with a cringe inducing level of theatre kid energy that already sounded dated at the time of release. You really get the sense Gaga was sniffing her own farts and thought the era was a lot more groundbreaking and edgy than it actually was. Joanne and Chromatica are forgettable albums that are just the most basic and generic attempts at soft-rock/Americana and House. Mayhem is a return to form and definitely her best album since Born This Way but the 70s and 80s influences she pulls from are extremely on the nose and many of the lyrics are painfully cliche, still a good album though.
Obviously Bob seems to be doing well right now in terms of his health and I hope he spends many more years on this earth but let's be honest, he's really getting up there in years and Rough and Rowdy Ways felt so final in a way with it's themes of legacy and the peaceful acceptance of aging and death. I would love a new album of originals but I'm not setting myself up for disappointment by expecting it at this point. How would you feel if Rough and Rowdy Ways ended up being his last?
Freewheelin Bob Dylan (classic)
Times They Are a Changin (classic)
Another Side of Bob Dylan (acclaimed)
Bringing It All Back Home (classic)
Highway 61 Revisited (classic)
Blonde on Blonde (classic)
John Wesley Harding (classic)
Nashville Skyline (acclaimed)
New Morning (acclaimed)
Blood on the Tracks (classic)
Desire (classic)
Basement Tapes (acclaimed)
Oh Mercy (acclaimed)
Time Out of Mind (classic)
Love and Theft (acclaimed)
Modern Times (acclaimed)
Tempest (acclaimed)
Rough and Rowdy Ways (acclaimed)
Being a one hit wonder or a one album album wonder is often used as a slight against artists who experienced a massive fall off or were never very respected to begin with yet rarely do we hear about artists who have gone down as icons and inspirations for those who follow that only have one classic in terms of either critical acclaim or commercial success.
My example is Carole King. She wrote a bunch of songs for other people but Tapestry seems like the only thing she's ever done that gets attention despite the fact she's released more than twenty solo albums. Did her songwriting fall off a cliff or was Tapestry so good that it overshadows the rest of her output? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy her music but it seems kinda odd she's hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of the 70s on the basis of a single classic album.
The Beatles and Led Zeppelin had six album runs from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road and Zep debut to Physical Graffiti, Pink Floyd had a four album run from Darkside to The Wall, but David Bowie released ten fantastic albums in a row if you exclude Pin Ups which is just a bunch of covers anyway.
Needless to say that the battle was the turning point of the First Barons War and saved England from French conquest. Marshal led his outnumbered army from the front and was heavily engaged in bitter close quarters combat at the age of seventy.
According to a biographer, the guardian of the realm gave his troops a stirring speech on the eve of battle which goes "Listen now, sirs! Glory and honour are at hand! Right here and now, you can win the country’s freedom, truly: so damn any man who fails this day to challenge those who seize our lands and property! And may God see that right prevails! The enemy are here, right here in your hands. They’re at our mercy, I promise you, come what may, unless heart and courage fail us. And if we die in this mission, then God who sees and knows the good will set us in His paradise, in that I place my certain trust; and if we defeat them, without a lie, we’ll have won lasting honour for all time, for ourselves and all our line! And I tell you, our enemies labour under another grievous burden: they’re excommunicated! How much more that shackles them! What a dismal fate they have in store: they’ll be going straight to Hell! They’re waging war on God and Holy Church, and I swear God has placed them at our mercy. So come, make haste, let’s fall on them - the time and the hour are upon us!"
Beyonce and Lady Gaga are widely considered the greatest live performers of their generation, at least as far as mainstream music goes. Incredible vocals, stage presence, production value etc. Have you seen anyone else live who belongs in the same tier or do they stand alone?