The largely acoustic album kicks off with "Tangled up in Blue," the long tale of Dylan's main character reuniting with an old lover in the middle of a strip club. Since 1966's Blonde on Blonde, Dylan hadn't been able to top his pot-fueled, nonsensical best. Dylan was coming off albums such as Self Portrait and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. David Bowie took a cue from the song in his own recording, "Song for Bob Dylan." "Hear this, Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you," Bowie sings, much like Dylan sang, "Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song" years before.įrom the moment the album flicks on, you know this album is an homage to Dylan's early days. What goes around comes around: "Song to Woody," one of the album's two originals, was an open letter from Dylan to his idol, Woody Guthrie. In hindsight, it looks like an intentional foreshadowing for his 1980 album, Saved, which revolves around his newfound Christian faith. Since the song was largely made up of old folk standards, Christianity and references to Jesus Christ pepper the album. He needed to take songs which were not his and make them his, which is debatably more difficult than writing one's own songs.
In an album largely made up of covers, Dylan had his work cut out for him. We don't actually hear a Bob Dylan song until "Talkin' New York" comes on after the first track. The song ultimately didn't make the album cut, though, and ended up on The Bootleg Series. "Catfish" was penned as a tribute to Major League Baseball pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter. He quit smoking prior to the album's recording.Īthletes: Dylan originally recorded another song about an athlete to be on Desire. Although his voice was already on the fritz in Nashville Skyline, the simplicity of the arrangements and the soul of the lyrics more than makes up for it.ĭylan's mellow delivery: Throughout the album, Dylan sounds notably less biting than in his previous work. From the staccato sentence structure of "Lay, Lady, Lay," to the revisited version of "Girl from the North Country" with Johnny Cash, we're offered a glimpse into Dylan's lyricism at its origin - before it becomes a polished studio release. Seven years into his recording career, Dylan released a deviation from his folk protesting, power-to-the-people facade. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, here are Bob Dylan's 10 best albums. Regardless of whether every song sounds identical to the recording when played live - spoiler alert, it won't - each entry in his repertoire has made its own contribution to the future of popular music. Dylan's work is a reflection of how he's been able to transform multiple genres - folk, rock, country - while maintaining his simultaneous dichotomy of the doe-eyed country boy lost in the city and the rebel without a cause.
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