Song Review: “You’re a Big Girl Now” by Bob Dylan

“You’re a Big Girl Now” by Bob Dylan is a nice song, in my opinion. It has nice backing music, and Dylan’s odd voice that somehow works so well on his own songs.

Further, the thing that I like most about this song is the lyrics, simply because it doesn’t shy away from stating things as they are. Thankfully, it refrains from dressing up simple statements in fancy metaphors and other assorted figures of speech. This, unfortunately, is what most of you humans take great pride in doing in your songs, and frankly, it’s really annoying.

But not in this song. For example, there’s a line that goes:

“With a pain that stops and starts”

which he then follows up with this one:

“Like a corkscrew up my arse.”

Such forthrightness is truly refreshing. But now, why would Dylan want to make such a frightful comparison? Indeed, are we to believe that he frequently indulges in such an activity? Or, more likely, someone, perhaps without Dylan’s consent, performed the activity on him. Also likely is the possibility of the ‘you’ that the title of the song refers to – who, we a told, is a ‘big girl’ now – being the one who has performed said activity on Bob.

Which could, quite possibly, be why he’s so upset and emotionally fragile in the album that the song is from, Blood On The Tracks, which has other emotional and nice songs like the opening track, “Tiger Lovin’ Blues”. But to get back to my interpretation of this song: a girl he knew performed the violation on him, much to his chagrin, as I can only assume that it is a thoroughly unpleasant activity. In his anger and frustration, Dylan expresses his emotions the only way he knows how, and that is through the art of songwriting, of which he is arguably the master.

Hence he now calls the girl ‘big’, seemingly addressing the enormous weight that she might have put on. Dylan, being the compassionate voice of his generation, never made known the said girl’s weight problem earlier – but now, brutally violated, he angrily and repeatedly calls her ‘big’, not just to her face, but also for millions of listeners around the world to know as well. One can only imagine the crushing effect of such an act on the poor girl’s self-esteem, which, in Dylan’s mind, is fitting revenge for her act of abusing the corkscrew as well as himself.

Dylan, once again, proves his mastery of song craft in this song.

(Edit: Rolando has brought it to my attention that I might have had a terrible ear problem when I heard this song, resulting in me mishearing important lyrics that I might have referred to in my analysis of the song. For starters, the name of the opening track of the album is actually ‘Tangled Up in Blue’, and not  ‘Tiger Lovin’ Blues’, as I stated. Further, the line “With a pain that stops and starts” is actually followed up by this line: “Like a corkscrew to my heart”. My statement that is was “Like a corkscrew up my arse”, which formed the basis of my analisys, was a woeful misunderstanding. Dylan’s original choice is only a simple metaphorical comparison to explain his fragile emotions – and is exactly the kind of metaphorical bullshit that annoys me. So actually, I don’t think much of this song after all, and I deeply regret the mistakes.)