I can offer anecdotal evidence as to whether the lyrics 'work' on their own, without the music.
I was 15 when I got into Bob Dylan, from a cassette tape of the original 'Greatest Hits' (the one that only had about 12 songs on it). I can't remember how I acquired it, nobody else I knew was really a fan. I think it may have been my auntie's.
I played it to death, then started repeatedly borrowing the 'Collected Lyrics 1962-1985' from the local library. I couldn't afford to buy any more albums and this of course was long before YouTube/Spotify and its ilk (this would have been the late 80s). So I read and re-read lyrics like these long before I eventually heard them sung:
Well, John the Baptist, after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me, great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"
The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry"
And, dropping a barbell, he points to the sky
Saying, "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken"
and
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.
and
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs and couldn't help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil
I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending 'neath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you
and
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise she's all right she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
Now, yes I was 15. But I was utterly spellbound. And from that I read some stuff (again, pre-Internet of course) and discovered the Beats, then Rimbaud, then to Blake, Whitman, to Eliot, to the 17th century metaphysical poets, to the Romantics, to Yeats, to Auden and Plath and Larkin. To finally realising that I was into this thing. Called poetry.
So yeah. Utterly subjective, but I say well done Bob. And thanks.
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Hybrid Mode
