Dylan opens “Shooting Star” at a concert in Rome during a 1991 tour saying that this is a song about “watching people pass you by.”  They seem to come out of nowhere and pass you right by. ”  In Chronicles, he writes about how writing the song involved a coming out of nowhere: He calls it [t]he kind of song you hear when you’re wide awake in your head and see and feel things, but all the rest of you is asleep.” I take both of these comments as meaning that anything can be a shooting star, people, lyrics, melody, sound, etc; anything can enter your world, the world, shoot into you and then out, but trigger thoughts you weren’t planning to have, thoughts about a you, a me, and regrets, about some you and me:

Guess it’s too late to say the things to you
That you needed to hear me say

The rhyming in verses 1, 2, and 4, comprising three fourths of the song, have a strict pattern of a/b/c/b/d/b/a/b.  The b sounds in verse one are triggered by “you,” in 2, by “me,” and in 4 by “away,” the slipping away of the star, like how rhymes slip in and of a song that has rhymes.

The third verse is remarkable for what it shoots into the song, namely the last fire truck from hell (what a peculiar image that is), and things heard for the last time, the sermon on the mount, the last radio.  The rhyme pattern in it is a/a/b/c/d/d/c; it’s a pattern that breaks a pattern, both with the rhymes and the number of lines, 8 for the others, 7 for this one.  It is a verse that within the song comes from nowhere, and then passes right by.  It has a shooting star effect within a song about a shooting star, or all that jolts us into some recognition, memory, self-reflection.

The June 6, 1991, performance in Rome is below.  It’s a lovely one.