Unintentionally introducing a new era of sound, Bob Dylan created controversy over his song “Like a Rolling Stone” written after returning home disappointed from his tour in England, feeling like his career was taking a direction he did not approve of. “There was nothing happening for me. Every concert was the same…I didn’t understand, I’d get standing ovations and it wouldn’t mean anything to me.” His audience expected the folk performer Dylan which is different than the Dylan he was interested in being. His resultant feelings of rejection and confusion helped fuel the lyrics to his 1965 folk rock worldwide hit “Like a Rolling Stone,” focusing on the helplessness one experiences after suffering an unexpected fall.
Faced with the challenges of his own musical “dead-end” and almost quitting his career as a singer/songwriter, Dylan expresses his animosity towards individuals who had it made without too much effort of their own, surprised to find himself included in that group. With the release of “Like a Rolling Stone,” Dylan found he was slowly straying from the musical standards of his time that he had easily followed, straying where few had gone before. He was on his own with the new rock tones his song took, much like his song’s chorus repeatedly states: how does it feel to be on your own?
The constant use of simple rhyme dispersed throughout the song may be understood as a means of writing down thoughts in the simplest and easiest method possible, with not many details entering the lyrics. “It was ten pages long. It wasn't called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper… I had never thought of it as a song,” Dylan admitted about the lyric’s construction. Using rhyme allowed Dylan to freely pick any word that matched both in meaning and phonology in order to convey the raw emotions he was trying to express.
Dylan begins our subject’s description as a well-off woman who was correctly warned that she will see hardships ahead, much like how everyone sees ups and downs in their own lives. Our subject once had direction and people that recognized her and her prestigious background. Hidden under the anonymity of the song’s subject, Dylan is subtly talking about how his music career took an unexpected turn, noticing the turn of events and how it feels to have his career turned upside down, left in unfamiliar territory. Both the subject of the song and Dylan are now reduced to their essences, their true selves, without the frills and privileges their comfortable pasts had provided.
The song names our subject “Miss Lonely” and speaks of her attendance in the “finest school,” symbolic to the protection and comfort one receives when part of a large group. Using “school” reminds us of an unprepared schoolgirl entering the real world upon graduation, leaving the shelter the school provided. A person “who has not really known hardship, but on whom hard times are about to descend,” is the subject of Dylan’s song. Miss Lonely was not taught how to be self-sufficient in trying times and is therefore unable to make it on her own like she now needs to do. Behind Miss Lonely’s façade of perfection and happiness is a crumbling tower ready to collapse from its inability to sustain itself.
Dylan warns, “You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you,” meaning one should take care of his or her own well-being. Miss Lonely never broke free from her safe cocoon, never dealt with the realities of life, and therefore did not expect the real work it would take in order to get ahead in life. She has lost her identity since she never stood for anything that held any personal value for her.
Miss Lonely used to mock those whose position she is in now. A modern version of a “Napoleon in rags,” she now has nothing to her name. Napoleon Bonaparte is known for his exile to Elba after mistakenly considering himself undefeatable against his enemies. It was his hubris that marked the definitive end of his reign. Like Napoleon, Miss Lonely scoffed at those that warned her she was “bound to fall”, but her downfall eventually came leaving her on her own.
It is important to note that Dylan may be offering positive encouragement with the last words of his song that say, “When you ain’t got nothing/you got nothing to lose.” Miss Lonely may have lost all that she had, but she now has the opportunity to become something better than she used to be since there is nowhere to go but upward. Dylan too was starting the second half of his journey as an artist, finally finding the voice and sound he wanted to use in his work from then on. Presented with the opportunity to begin a new and defining chapter of his life, Dylan himself could answer his incessant question that asks “how does it feel to be on your own,” since with a hard work and determination, “it” could actually feel good.