Don't really need another Dylan

 Imagine if Bob Dylan had been blessed with Timothée Chalmet’s looks and singing voice. He could have been a big star. Haha.

We were getting caught up on SNL episodes the other night and finally got to this one: Timothée (not crazy about that diacritic and double e) up there covering three of Dylan’s lesser-sung tunes: “Outlaw Blues,” “Three Angels” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” He did a pretty good job – just as you’d expect from someone who’s spent the last couple of years learning to ape Dylan’s style for “A Complete Unknown.”

As SNL musical guests go, you could do worse. GloRilla, for example, who was on the week before. But I found something about it kind of off-putting. 

There’s the shameless movie tie-in, of course, with Oscars only a month out. But then SNL’s stylish staging and video effects made it seem that Chalmet wasn’t paying tribute to Dylan so much as inhabiting the man’s persona. Here was Dylan 2.0 (in the parlance of our times), with a cuter face and cleaner voice and the various rough edges carefully smoothed away.  

It’s one thing to cover an artist’s songs; it’s another to pretend, somewhat convincingly, to be the artist. You have to do it for a biopic, but it seems weird to have the make-believe spreading beyond the confines of the film.  

Not a great outrage, of course. It just struck me that way, as a guy who listened to a lot of the real Bob Dylan when those songs were new. 

Have you seen the movie? I haven’t but surely will at such time as it’s available to view at home.