Something better than in the middle.

272. The Wallflowers - "One Headlight" (Interscope Records, 1997)

So, Tom Petty sounds like Bob Dylan. And the Wallflowers sound like the Heartbreakers. And Jakob Dylan sounds like Bob Dylan. But Jakob Dylan doesn't sound like Tom Petty. Like, at all, really, at least not to me.

The line "there's got to be something better than 'in the middle'" is super-ironic, because everything about this song is really quite middle of the road. The difference between Petty and Jakob's Bob Dylan voices is that Petty really goes for it, the screechy, over-exaggerated, and at times annoying impression while Jakob just seems like "hey, yeah, I sound like the guy, he's my dad, so what? Ain't nothing funny about that." And yet, something about this song, with all its po-faced M.O.R., makes me like it better than anything by Tom Petty and anything Papa Dylan's done in about a quarter of a century. Maybe it's just that disco beat, and the earnestness that lines like "She says, 'It's cold, it feels like Independence Day'..." (btw, in my head, she's thinking of this, not this) are delivered in. I mean, "a Broken Heart Disease," fer chrissake, ha!

Jakob might not have his father's gift for winking at his own bullshit, but maybe sometimes believing in your own bullshit works even better.