Bob Dylan thinks people are "joking" when they compare him to Frank Sinatra.
The 73-year-old singer-songwriter’s 36th studio album, ‘Shadows in the Night’, features a number of songs associated with Sinatra – including ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ – but Dylan insists the legendary crooner is beyond compare.
Asked whether it’s a risk to make records previously sung by Sinatra, he said: "There’s nothing risky about making records.
"Comparing me with Frank Sinatra? You must be joking. To be mentioned in the same breath as him must be some sort of high compliment.
"Nobody touches him. Not me or anyone else."
Dylan confessed his new album is "out of step with the current media culture" but dismissed accusations of being "corny".
He told the American Association Of Retired Persons magazine: "These songs, take ’em or leave ’em, if nothing else, are songs of great virtue. That’s what they are.
"If they sound trite and corny to somebody, well so much for that.
"But people’s lives today are filled on so many levels with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice.
"We see the destruction of human life and the mockery of it, everywhere we look. These songs are anything but that. Romance never does go out of fashion.
"It’s radical. Maybe it’s out of step with the current media culture."
Bob Dylan says comparisons with Frank Sinatra are a ‘joke’
