I still wonder how it fits in with the later killings. In the light of his need to confess, or seek help, he should be anything but cheerful. It’s relevant to the question about whether the narrator achieves salvation. The present ‘now’ is a combination of a past moment and the current moment. (Journey Through Dark Heat), You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go. Though reform requires change across time, decisions may not. [3] Dylan scholar Jochen Markhorst also wrote an online essay in which he greatly expanded on this murder ballad conceit. The present is not an escape from the past. [11], "When is "fairy time" in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream? Learn to play guitar by chord / tabs using chord diagrams, transpose the key, watch video lessons and much more. “I’ve been down on the killing floors” comes from Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” (or possibly earlier songs by Son House or Skip James). [2], Music journalist Patrick Doyle, writing in a 2020 Rolling Stone article on "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century", where it placed 18th, commented on the track's unique, shape-shifting nature. Whereas the latter, we’re told, ‘tried to tell someone, ‘ the narrator here declares ‘I need to tell someone’. Soon after midnight, four more bombs blew up at a railway station, she said. As regards ‘fairy queen’ I think it might be appropriate to take that as the speaker’s romantic, fairy-tale view of his life. I’m pretty sure now this is a love song to us — we who follow the music and try to discern its meaning — his core audience. The expressions are identical but for one crucial thing – ‘he tried‘ has replaced ‘I need‘. Weak and desperate for support, he’s immediately capable of becoming proud, contemptuous, cruel and hypocritical. He describes it as beginning as "Fifties doo-wop before it turns into a murder ballad" and calls the end result "soulful". No play links currently available. In the final verse, with the reappearance of the refrain, time – urgency – is back with a vengeance. It’s worth noting too the effect of the question ‘Who’s ever heard of him?’. The hour is late, death is approaching, but something new is happening. The narrator’s character is full of reversals, inconsistencies and misjudgements. And it’s this which is brought out in the line ‘Who’s ever heard of him?’ It’s intended as a rhetorical question, but it has an answer. The chirp & chatterers may not literally be dead, they’re just of no account, might as well be dead and lying in their blood. There are two main sections to this analysis, ‘The Narrator’s Character’ and ‘Time’, and then a brief summing up. Instead of admitting this, he tries to pass it off as fate – her ‘passing by’. The song seems to be a representation of human psychology in that it depicts someone vacillating between reconciling himself with God and continuing his godless ways. At the very least, just as he was prepared to hoodwink God earlier, here he’s hoodwinking himself about the morality of his behaviour. I think the idea of Charlotte and Mary representing evil and good respectively is plausible, though. You can’t take in that you haven’t heard of someone without at the same time having heard of them. Neither attitude bodes well if at least a part of him wants to achieve reconciliation with God. The opportunity – the final opportunity – will be missed. Clearly if people (presumably Charlotte and Mary, and possibly Slim) are actively chirping and chattering, they’re unlikely to be lying and dying in their blood. Soon After Midnight is a subtle song of defiance, a ‘mystical love song’ that can also be seen as a testament to the artist’s devotion to his craft. "Soon After Midnight" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan that appears as the second track on his 2012 studio album Tempest. Two distinct times, the present and the future, have been fused into one. See About page. Listen to Soon After Midnight in full in the Spotify app. If reconciliation couldn’t be achieved before, it is not going to be achieved now. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Michel Montecrossa says about the 'Soon After Midnight' erotic music video for his sexy performance of the song from Bob Dylan's Audio-CD 'Tempest'. This ambiguity cuts across the straightforward view of a person attempting but possibly failing to reform. Ambiguity about whether he’s just committed murder, or whether he’s still contemplating doing so, make it uncertain whether he’ll manage to redeem himself. The narrator seems to be both a user of prostitutes and perhaps a murderer, but it’s left unclear how much he really wants to turn over a new leaf and whether he in fact does so. Green, with its natural associations, ought to set her apart from whatever evil he thinks he sees in Charlotte. It’s also far from clear that he’s prepared to do what’s required to bring it about. Soon After Midnight is a short film about complicated emotional states of the young generation, better known as quarter life crisis. Given this, whether the narrator is actually able to change his moral outlook is unclear, for without the usual temporal distinctions the concept of reform would appear not even to make sense. Ironically what he says is true – he has faced stronger walls than God’s; his own. There also seems to be a suggestion that human life is a unified whole in which the concept of change cannot apply. The latter seems to apply again here. [9] This makes it the third most frequently performed song from Tempest. What does it matter? One cannot see any justification (however perverse) for his implied condemnation of Mary too, though. The title is a reference to "fairy time" in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lieutenant Wickes reached the " Nancy " soon after midnight. Even if it just means he’s been hardened against fear through experience, the tone is still far from exemplifying the sort of humility appropriate when addressing God. The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963–1965, Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soon_After_Midnight&oldid=1020862850, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 1 May 2021, at 13:49. A possible implication of this is perhaps that even at a time of present guilt, past innocence is still in some way the case. Then, from the woods surrounding his house, something terrible starts trying to break in. Any reference to time is gone in the third verse, however, and with it any concern for speed. They lie and die in their blood’. Bob Dylan's 'Soon after Midnight' - an analysis - Part 2. One would expect the deaths to be in the future relative to the chirping and chattering, but they’re being treated as if they’re simultaneous with it. Soon After Midnight by Bob Dylan song meaning, lyric interpretation, video and chart position 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971). It suggests he has to put an imaginative gloss on reality instead of representing it as it is. The language here is full of self confidence – inexplicable in the light of the earlier comment. He has given up pursuing Charlotte, the “bad” girl (worldly aspirations, sensual delights, Whore of Babylon), and Mary, the “good” girl (spiritual aspirations, purity, Mother of Christ) — the evil and the good living side by side. And that does fit with the line you quote from ‘Scarlet Town’ – in which song red also figures prominently. Like much of Dylan's 21st-century output, he produced the song himself using the pseudonym Jack Frost. In this article we continue the analysis of this intriguing song. Given his relationship with Honey, it’s also utterly hypocritical of him to condemn one of the other girls as a ‘harlot’ since he doesn’t use any such pejorative term for Honey – presumably in an attempt to avoid condemning his association with her. Instead, ambiguity about time makes his life seem a unified whole – an interrelated whole in which the temporal parts are not wholly distinct. It's soon after midnight, D E A A7 And the moon is in my eye D My heart is cheerful. One doesn’t usually need to go ‘searching for phrases’ in order to praise someone. [4], In their book Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon note that the song's intro owes a debt to "A New Shade of Blue" by The Bobby Fuller Four and discuss how Dylan's vocal is "sweet and gentle", taking on a "new patina that makes it less aggressive" than on other recent songs. Equally, at a time of present innocence, past guilt is still the case. The trouble with seeing it as ‘to the fairy queen’ is that the fairy queen is referred to in the third person. He didn’t offer the money, he wants it to be thought; she ‘took’ it – his money, as if it wasn’t by then hers. They also praise the "excellent" playing of the band, "especially Donnie Herron's steel guitar solo, doubled by a six-string guitar". And that he condemns the practice would seem apparent from his murdering, or intending to murder, two of them and their client. A comparable fusing of times occurs in the penultimate verse: ‘Two timing Slim The killing floor is where animals were literally killed, one by one, before being cut up into meat. Like in many Dylan songs, the narrator seems on one level to be a representation of human nature. 359", "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century", "Soon after midnight: Bob Dylan's real murder ballad | Untold DylanUntold Dylan", "Bob Dylan's 20 Best Songs of the '10s and Beyond", "Soon After Midnight | The Official Bob Dylan Site", "You Need This In Your Ears Now: Aoife O' Donovan & Anthony da Costa "Scarlet Harlot" (Dylan Covers)", "Aoife O'Donovan "Soon After Midnight" 3/23/17 Shea Theater Arts Center Turners Falls, MA - YouTube", Live 1961–2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances, Bob Dylan – The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, Bob Dylan: The Complete Album Collection Vol. The identity of the times picked out by ‘is’ and ‘soon’ implies that the present moment both is and isn’t after midnight. The fun of the night, the wildness of the night creatures, and the fear that they bring. The second option seems plausible. Thus this is not about the start of a new dawn, a new day, but a celebration of the night. On the one hand the narrator uses prostitutes, and on the other he appears to condemn the practice. Released on … Scarlet can represent evil, due to its association with the whore of Babylon. When his girlfriend suddenly disappears, leaving a cryptic note as her only explanation, Hank's comfortable life and his sanity begin to crack. What has happened, is happening and will happen all acquire their natures from each other. I’ve faced stronger walls than yours’. ( Log Out /  Something similar is going on in the immediately preceding lines, except that it seems to be the present and the future again which are being fused, ‘They chirp and they chatter At less than three-and-a-half minutes, it is the shortest of Tempest's 10 songs and the only example of the pre-Rock Pop Ballad genre to be found on the album. The writer, Dylan, realizes at this late hour in his life that all he wants now, the only one he can hope to hold, is the fairy queen — his muse. But I’m not sure I can find much in the song to support the view that it’s a love song to us. If the narrator is hoping to reform, his boastfulness, contempt, arrogance, pride, hypocrisy and general duplicity don’t make this seem likely. And he shouldn’t boast about not being fearful. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall, Vol. Soon after midnight the enemy was reported entering the strait. 8: Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006, Vol. It implies that it’s been ‘now or never’ before, yet the whole point of the expression is that it’s only applicable once. It’s as if the narrator is trying to hoodwink God that he’s about to be praised when really the narrator is bent on ignoring him. Fifty years later, Charlotte the Harlot reaches Dylan’s oeuvre, in the intriguing and often misunderstood song “Soon After Midnight” on the acclaimed album Tempest (2012). Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. D A A7 I've been down on the killing floors. Streaming Alternate Versions by Various Artists A pun on ‘two timing’ suggests that, in addition to being in more than one relationship, the character exists in two times simultaneously. But as he grinds his life out, it may seem to Bob Dylan that after all else falls away, his imagination, his ability to see beyond the ordinary and to poetically and musically present it is what he is left with — intangible as a fairy queen.. Directed by Jeremy Gardner, Christian Stella. The current ‘now’, the present ‘now’, is the only time for action. He blames fate, and he blames Honey, but he doesn’t blame himself. It suggests that the non-presence of action at one time is likely to mean the non-presence of action at a later time. We’re the ones who can supply that “shot of love” he says he needs. The hypocrisy apparent here is further in evidence when we consider his dealings with a character called Slim: ‘Two-timing Slim I wonder. Alternatively it might be seen as a need to seek help for an unwanted temptation to kill. Change ), The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest, Where Are You Tonight? It’s the same sort of duplicity that’s we’ll see is present when he later describes his relationship with the girl called Honey. It is soon after midnight, when all the creatures of the night come out. I don’t think there are any killings. This is suggested when we compare his words with those used about the watchman in ‘Tempest’. His ‘need to tell someone’ suggests a need to be God-fearing which the boast belies. It is, of course, only apparent modesty which is shown even in the first verse. Not only is what’s said inconsistent, but it’s wholly inappropriate: ‘My heart is cheerful 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack, Vol. Like much of Dylan's 21st-century output, he produced the song himself using the pseudonym Jack Frost. [1], A 2015 USA Today article that ranked "all of Bob Dylan's songs" placed "Soon After Midnight" 40th on the list (out of 359), citing it as the "best song" on Tempest and comparing it to Dylan's earlier "Mississippi" as a memorable song on the theme of "lost love". Soon after midnight, the champagne began to flow. YesI agree; chirping and chattering could be being seen by him as a sort of death so lying and dying in their blood could be metaphorical. Or, to put it another way, the present having-heard-of-them has become fused with the past not-having-heard-of-them, to make the past and the present one. I misspoke. A F#m It's soon after midnight, D E A E And my day has just begun A gal named Honey Took my money She was passing by. One of the passengers in ‘Tempest’ is Calvin, the exponent of pre-determination and, at least on one level, his spirit would seem to be present here. She was passing by’. Accordingly the earlier ‘killing floors’ murders will exist in the present, and these murders will in some sense be the murder of the two girls and Slim. This seems quite extraordinary given that the narrator himself appears to be two-timing. His date with the ‘fairy queen’, together with the Honey incident, would make the narrator every bit as worthy of condemnation as Slim. One possibility might be that he’s been so damaged by his experiences (perhaps in an abattoir) that they’re causing him to treat people as less than human. Implicitly, then, his condemnation of Slim is a condemnation of himself. However, it’s also significant that the very process by which the information (that no one’s heard of him) is given, is the very process which makes it no longer true. It might strike one as curious the way the wording of the title is used when it’s repeated in four of the verses: Strictly speaking it can’t be soon after midnight. And what he says in the final verse shows him to be guilty of a disdainful contempt: This, while implying he’s aware of having misjudged his hearer, suggests that he’s not the type to shrink from dismissing people out of hand. When it is released, the album receives – obviously – considerable attention and without exception positive reviews. I’m not afraid of your fury Interestingly, green is one of the few colours conspicuous by its absence there. In the play, the character Bottom has an encounter with Titania, the fairy queen, shortly after midnight.[8]. Soon after midnight, Charlotte began vomiting violently and complaining of pains in her stomach. If it’s past midnight, it’s extremely unlikely that she was just ‘passing by’ as he somewhat gratuitously informs us. ( Log Out /  So he keeps trying to reach us with his songs. There may be a sort of perverse logic in condemning Charlotte for her scarlet clothing. It means that something is going to happen, albeit in the near future, but nevertheless in the future. 1 to No. Either way this inability to cope, this plea for support, is in stark contrast to the bravado of the third verse: ‘I’m in no great hurry The song seems to present time as a unified whole, however, which would render the required change out of the question. They’re evidence of a thorough recklessness. From Newport to the Ancient Empty Street in L.A. Just sayin’. The past rejections have worked their way into the present to become the present rejection. The mismatch between the appropriately self-deprecatory tone of the first verse and the bolshie tone of the third makes the narrator seems beset by a sort of madness. A young guy from the generation… vimeo.com So presumably the narrator could either be taken literally to have been an abattoir worker – or to have had similarly dehumanizing experiences – or to be dismissing his victims (on my interpretation) as animals. Perhaps he realizes neither one can be conquered. The implication is that Slim deserves to die because he’s having a relationship with two women simultaneously. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. I'm searching for phrases To sing your praises I need to tell someone It's soon after midnight And my day has just begun Bob Dylan - Soon After Midnight Lyrics | … Instead a bolshie self assertiveness, totally out of keeping with the previous urgency, takes over. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Soon After Midnight The liner notes say "Written by Bob Dylan", but it sounds awf'ly lot like Bobby Fuller's A New Shade of Blue- riff, chords, and partly the melody. Only if there is separate past, present and future (the intervention of time) is reform possible, because reform involves change across time. It was an unpleasant, dehumanizing job. My sense is that he has seen and done the worst; there’s nothing that’s gonna bother him now. The importance of time is hinted at in the title, where each of the three words is to do with it. The narrator has heard of him. Just as a character there waits for ‘time and space to intervene’, the intervention of time would seem to be a theme here too. The fairy queen is just his connection to that other world where the songs come from. Despite what he’s had to endure, his heart is cheerful; he’s never fearful. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Lyrics to 'Soon After Midnight' by Bob Dylan. 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