Bob Dylan Wrote It, Billy Joel Stole It (Sort Of), and Adele Made It Hers
By Aaron Wulff
Bob Dylan wrote “Make You Feel My Love” for his 1997 album Time Out of Mind, and then Billy Joel released it a month before Dylan did.
Let that sink in. Billy Joel beat Bob Dylan to Bob Dylan’s own song.
Joel put it on his Greatest Hits Volume III, and when the song was first pitched to him, he said he felt like he’d struck gold. Which, fair. It’s Bob Dylan handing you a love song. You don’t say no to that.
Dylan’s version came out in September 1997 on Time Out of Mind, an album that won him three Grammys including Album of the Year. The song itself is almost aggressively simple. No elaborate imagery, no cryptic verses about tambourine men. Just a straight-up promise: “I could hold you for a million years, to make you feel my love.” For Dylan, that’s practically a Hallmark card.
The recording was stripped down too. Dylan played piano (a 1920s spinet, because of course), with just organ, bass, one drum, and one guitar. Keyboardist Augie Meyers remembered Dylan asking, “if you and Doug Sahm were in the studio, how would you do it?” Meyers said, “You play piano and I’ll play organ. Let’s have just one bass, one drum and one guitar.” So that’s what they did. Two takes. Done.
Then Garth Brooks got involved, and that’s where it gets funny.
Brooks wanted to cover it for the Hope Floats soundtrack in 1998. He got a plain silver CD in the mail with Dylan’s name scribbled across the front. He put it in the player and, shocker… couldn’t understand a word Dylan was saying. Brooks panicked. He searched for the lyrics online, couldn’t find them. He bought every Dylan CD he could get his hands on, trying to match the sounds coming out of his speakers to lyrics in the booklets. None of them had the lyrics.
Then his phone rang. It was Don Was, producing the soundtrack. No hello, no introduction. Just: “Are you panicking yet?”
Brooks figured it out eventually. His version went to number one on the country charts and got him a Grammy nomination. Dylan got one too, for Best Country Song. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d type.
But the version most people know? That’s Adele.
Her manager was, in his words, “the biggest Dylan fan,” and he’d been bugging her to listen to it for ages. She resisted. “I don’t want a cover on my album,” she told him. “It kind of implies that I’m incapable of writing enough of my own songs for my first record.” (She was 19. The confidence is staggering.)
Then she heard it in New York, and it got her. “It just really touched me,” she said. “It’s cheesy, but I think it’s just a stunning song, and it really just summed up everything that I’d been trying to write in my songs.”
She put it on 19 as the only song she didn’t write herself. Called it her favorite on the album.
Then the critics came for her. Someone told her they’d read online that she’d “killed Bob Dylan” with her cover. Her response? “I actually think I’ve saved him. He’s going to get £1 million out of that song.”
She wasn’t wrong. The song’s been covered over 450 times now. It’s basically a standard.
Ok, so can we dance to it?
Here’s the thing. This is a beautiful song. It’s also a slow song. We’re talking somewhere around 77 BPM, which isn’t a total dealbreaker, but you’re going to feel it.
Fun fact, Garth’s is the same tempo, and Billy Joel’s is even slower, so there’s no escaping it.
If you’re set on this one, you’ve got options. Nightclub Two-Step works at this tempo and it might be the most comfortable step for the tempo. I prefer Rumba to 2 Step generally, and that could work too, but in this case I’m not sure it makes sense with the tempo. Talk to your instructor about what feels comfortable, because at this speed, every step is deliberate. There’s really nowhere to hide.
The song is mostly just Adele and a piano, and just know that the dynamics can make it hard to find and stay with the beat.
And at three and a half minutes, it’s too long. I know, I know. It’s a gorgeous song and you want to savor it. But three and a half minutes of very slow dancing is a long time to be up there, especially if you’re not doing much beyond swaying. Your guests will start checking their phones. So cut it or fade it. You’ll get all the emotion without the endurance test.
Which version should you use? I vote Adele’s. Dylan’s is great if you’re a Dylan person, Garth if you prefer country, Billy if you’re ok just swaying.
But Adele’s vocal is what made this a wedding song.
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