YMMV / Bob Dylan

• Archive Panic: For a man his age and with a career as long as his, Dylan is notoriously prolific. To date he's released thirty-six studio albums and fifty-eight singles. Then there are the many live albums, Bootleg Series albums, and other compilations.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Considering how long his music career has lasted, this was inevitable. Dylan has had at least two eras of divisive releases, though several albums (and if not that, songs) from these eras have since been Vindicated by History.
  • Dylan's output from 1969–1973 had mixed reactions from fans at the time, though critics were generally kinder. Nashville Skyline was a Genre Shift to Country Music (complete with soft crooning) after Dylan temporarily quit smoking, much to the displeasure of Rock fans. His next album, Self Portrait, consists mostly of covers, and unlike Nashville was coldly received by both fans and critics alike. New Morning and his soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid^note the latter includes "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" managed to Win Back the Crowd, but then came Dylan, which consists of outtakes recorded for previous albums, was released by Columbia Records without Dylan's permission and remains the most consistent contender for the worst album in his discography^note However, since Dylan was released against, well, Dylan's wishes, this one was not his fault. This Audience-Alienating Era would come to an end with the release of 1974's Planet Waves, which began a resurging of acclaimed albums (including Blood on the Tracks, although Street Legal incited harsh reviews in America but was welcomed with open arms in Britain).
  • Dylan's second Audience-Alienating Era—and probably his most infamous—was his 1979–1990 output. Dylan converted to Christianity and released three Christian-themed albums over the course of 1979–1981, which alienated audiences even more than his Genre Shift from rock to country with Nashville Skyline^note That said, the first of these albums, Slow Train Coming, is better regarded now. It didn't help that Dylan refused to play any of his pre-Christian songs for a while after converting. 1983's Infidels was more warmly received on the grounds of its Christian themes being less overt in favour of more personal themes, but Empire Burlesque retains a Broken Base, and both Knocked Out Loaded and Down in the Groove were consecutively savaged by critics and sold poorly.^note However, the last three all contain one song that's now viewed as a Dylan classic—"Dark Eyes", "Brownsville Girl" and "Silvio", respectively. It was not all doom and gloom, however, and Oh Mercy was well-received as a comeback album that to this day is generally regarded as Dylan's best album of The '80s. Unfortunately, that was followed by Under the Red Sky in 1990, which was seen as a disappointment in comparison and sold accordingly^note In a 2006 interview, Dylan himself acknowledged that the complaints weren't unwarranted, and explained that the album suffered from a Troubled Production and Artist Disillusionment on Dylan's part. After releasing two albums in the first half of The '90s—consisting of covers of traditional Folk Music that were nonetheless well-received—1997's Time Out of Mind was released, acclaimed and marked the beginning of a Career Resurrection for Dylan.
• Award Snub: He's been a Grammy Awards darling since The '90s, but before then his only solo win (he had won Album of the Year as a member of George Harrison and friends for The Concert for Bangladesh) was Best Rock Vocal for "Gotta Serve Somebody" from Slow Train Coming. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan? Highway 61 Revisited? Blonde on Blonde? Zero nominations for any of them. Blood on the Tracks did win one... for Best Liner Notes.
  • Ended when the campaign for a Nobel Prize in Literature for Dylan's lyrics finally succeeded in 2016.
• Awesome Music: Here's a fun game. Find any familiar rock artist from the same era. Compare their first album entirely before Highway 61 Revisited to their first entirely after. (Even The Beatles? Especially The Beatles.)
• Broken Base:
  • The split between "Dylan the protest singer" and "Dylan the rockstar" is legendary.
  • It is easy to forget that the outcry over his conversion to Christianity, with the first tour unexpectedly switching to an all gospel format with no pre-conversion songs and forty-minute onstage lectures, was probably a bigger break even than the "going electric."
• Covered Up: All too often (this list could take its own page), with Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" being the most prominent example, and it's often considered to be better than Dylan's version. Dylan himself seems to think so since he apparently now plays the song in Hendrix's style in live performances.
  • "Blowin' in the Wind" (Peter, Paul, and Mary)
  • "Mr. Tambourine Man" (The Byrds)
  • "My Back Pages" (The Byrds, The Ramones)
  • "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (Warren Zevon, Eric Clapton, Guns N' Roses, Cold Chisel)
  • "Maggie's Farm" (Rage Against the Machine)
  • "I Shall Be Released" (The Band, The Heptones)
  • "It Ain't Me Babe" (The Turtles, Johnny Cash)
  • "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (Them featuring Van Morrison, The Byrds)
  • "Quinn the Eskimo" (Manfred Mann)
  • "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" (Fairport Convention, who translated the tune into French)
  • "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" (The Byrds)
  • "If Not for You" (George Harrison)
  • "To Make You Feel My Love" (Adele, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks)
  • "Wagon Wheel" (Old Crow Medicine Show, with original verses but a chorus based on a Dylan demo from 1973)
    Bob Dylan: [Introducing "To Make You Feel My Love"] This is a song I wrote for Garth Brooks. Regrets, I've had a few...
    • It should be noted, however, that most of these songs have had more success for the artists that covered them when they entered in the charts, but Dylan's original versions are still more popular and iconic.
• Creator Worship: Considered one of the most acclaimed artists of all time, Bob Dylan is often practically synonymous with the title of "Greatest Songwriter".
• Critical Dissonance: The much-reviled Self Portrait hit #1 in the UK and #4 in the US, and generally has a better reputation in the Dylan fandom than among critics ^note Though there were some positive reappraisals in the wake of The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait. Along with the divisive status of being his first Christian album, Slow Train Coming had mixed reviews but was a Top 5 hit on both sides of the Atlantic. On the other hand, Infidels and Oh Mercy were both hailed by critics as returns-to-form but couldn't even crack the Top 20.
• Epic Riff: Very short opening samples of songs like "The Times They Are a-Changin'", "Like a Rolling Stone", "Lay Lady Lay", "All Along the Watchtower", or "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" are more than enough for listeners to identify.
  • Not as well-known, but 1980's "Solid Rock" is probably the purest example of this in his catalogue.
  • He Lampshades this in "Sitting On a Barbed-Wire Fence": "I know you're gonna think this song is just a riff."
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Many of Dylan's songs have overt connections to civil rights and/or philosophical and social themes.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Not universal, but His Bobness is thrown around by fans a bit.
  • Attempts to divine meaning from Dylan's Word Salad Lyrics are sometimes referred to as "the Bobbalah."
  • Some of his past tours have acquired unofficial fan nicknames, like the Alimony Tour^note After he was forced to pay a big settlement to Sara Lowndes Dylan following their divorce, he went on a lengthy tour where he seemed to be trying to increase his commercial appeal by playing mainly his Greatest Hits and adopting a Bruce Springsteen-style band and stage demeanor in 1978 and the Musical Retrospective Tour^note After refusing to play any of his older songs in his first two tours after becoming a Christian, he decided to sprinkle a few of them back into his set list. Naturally, this became a huge selling point, with radio ads promising the shows would be "a musical retrospective", when really they were still largely songs from his gospel albums in 1980.
  • Fans regularly refer to his regular touring since 1988 as the Never Ending Tour, which was originally something Dylan said in an interview but later lampshaded:
  Bob Dylan: Don't be bewildered by the Never Ending Tour chatter. There was a Never Ending Tour but it ended in 1991 with the departure of guitarist G. E. Smith. That one's long gone but there have been many others since then: "The Money Never Runs Out Tour" (Fall of 1991) "Southern Sympathizer Tour" (Early 1992) "Why Do You Look At Me So Strangely Tour" (European Tour 1992) "The One Sad Cry Of Pity Tour" (Australia & West Coast American Tour 1992) "Outburst Of Consciousness Tour" (1992) "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Tour" (1993) and others, too many to mention each with their own character & design.
• Friendly Fandoms: Fans of Dylan are often fans of other iconic singer-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Neil Young, and many others. Though there is also some Fandom Rivalry mixed in as to "Who is really the greatest songwriter."
• Genius Bonus: Numerous references in his songs to everything from Shakespearian characters and historical figures to pop culture and current events.
• Genre Turning Point: The day he started playing rock music.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: There's an annual celebration marking his birthday in Shillong, India.
• Growing the Beard: "Blowin' In the Wind" marks the start of his truly original, thoughtful songwriting.
  • After the ill-received Self Portrait (allegedly supposed to be bad) New Morning and to a much greater extent Blood on the Tracks were seen as a sort of re-growing of the beard. Likewise, Time Out of Mind saw a big shift in Dylan's style and was seen as a comeback after an inconsistent period in the 80s and early 90s, this one seems to have stuck as the subsequent albums, save the oddball, uncharacteristic charity cover album Christmas in the Heart, have been extremely well received.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The numbers 12 and 35, as in "Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35", when multiplied, produce a certain number which in the 1990s rose to prominence within the stoner subculture.
  • The line "Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked" in "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" from Bringing It All Back Home gets a huge cheer from the audience on the 1974 live album Before The Flood.
  • You can get an extra chuckle from the one-eyed midget bit in "Ballad of a Thin Man" if you picture Bushwick Bill in the role.
  • The second verse of 1981's "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" reads like a custom-written reply to the controversy 35 years later when he waited a couple weeks before contacting the Nobel Prize committee to say he would accept the award.
    Try to be pure at heart, they arrest you for robbery
    Mistake your shyness for aloofness, your silence for snobbery
    Got the message this morning, the one that was sent to me
    About the madness of becomin' what one was never meant to be
  • The Bobby Dylan and his Guitar 1967 satire by MAD (here◊ and here◊), in the wake of his recent standards albums, which have included some Irving Berlin songs. He actually did a Richard Rodgers song ("Blue Moon") only a few years after that cartoon.
• Ho Yay: "Ballad of a Thin Man" (see the Ho Yay page for specific examples in the song)
  • And for some people, his interactions with John Lennon...
• Hype Backlash: Similar to The Beatles, Dylan's title as "the greatest/most influential songwriter" has often led people to wonder what the big deal is.
• Memetic Mutation: Dylan's lyrics get quoted early and often.
  • "The pumps don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles!"
  • "The sun is not yellow, it's chicken!"
  • "Knockin' on heaven's door..."
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," start to finish.
  Your grass is turnin' black, there's no water in your well
  Your grass is turnin' black, there's no water in your well
  You've spent your last long dollar on seven shotgun shells
  • "All Along the Watchtower". Everyone knows the apocalyptic but awesome tone of the Hendrix version, but Dylan's sparse instrumentation on the original consisting of only a guitar and harmonica is arguably more eerie.
  • Even if the lyrics are more mysterious than directly threatening, there is something eerie about the haunting arrangement and whole vibe of "As I Went Out One Morning."
• Once Original, Now Common: It's easy for the younger generation to overlook just how much Dylan has shaped popular music and culture. Pioneering several different styles of songwriting, incorporating more political and intellectual topics into popular and rock music, rewriting the rules of songwriting and what songs could be about. Even his unconventional voice opened the door for a variety of singers who didn't have conventionally "pretty voices" ranging from Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, many of the punk artists, and so on.
• Seasonal Rot: Varies from person to person and most people find at least one song they like on even the least liked Dylan albums. The least loved period of Dylan's work seems to be from the 80s (though most of the albums have some group that appreciates them, especially Oh Mercy). That said, Self Portrait, Dylan, Saved and Down In The Groove seem to be seen as his least rewarding albums. Dylan probably has it worst though, it was compiled from outtakes, had no input from Bob himself and has never even been released as a standalone CD in the US (it was released on CD in Europe for a short while, and also included in the Complete Columbia Albums box set).
  • When they first came out Dylan's Christian albums received a lot of outrage but people's perception of them, especially Slow Train Coming, has mellowed out over time.
• Refrain from Assuming: The song is not "Everybody Must Get Stoned," it's "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35".
• Signature Song: Many, but "Like a Rolling Stone" is easily Dylan's most popular song, is his biggest international hit, and is overall considered as an absolute masterpiece; though, lately it's been matched by the likes of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". The other most iconic songs by Dylan are easily "The Times They Are A-Changin'", "Blowin' in the Wind", "Hurricane" and "Mr. Tambourine Man". By album:
  • Bob Dylan: "Song to Woody", his first notable original song. "House of the Risin' Sun", which The Animals learned from this album, and "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" could also count.
  • The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: "Blowin' in the Wind", with "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" as a runner-up. Also reasonably well-known is "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall".
  • The Times They Are A-Changin': The title track.
  • Another Side of Bob Dylan: "It Ain't Me Babe" and also "My Back Pages", courtesy of The Byrds who Covered Up and of the 1993 live version.
  • Bringing It All Back Home: "Mr. Tambourine Man" and also "Subterranean Homesick Blues". "Maggie's Farm", "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "She Belongs to Me" are quite well-known as well.
  • Highway 61 Revisited: "Like a Rolling Stone". Well-known are also "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the Title Track.
  • Blonde on Blonde: "I Want You", "Just Like a Woman" and (for its hit status) "Rainy Day Women" as a runner-up song. Notably, the first one is easily the one with more commercial appeal, and is more popular on streaming services, but "Just Like a Woman" is widely recognized as the better one and as more representative of him. On the other hand, "Rainy Day Women" was a big hit and a concert staple, but is a borderline novelty song and gets less attention nowadays.
    • Two well-known album tracks are "Visions of Johanna" (sometimes mentioned as a candidate for Dylan's greatest song) and "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again".
  • John Wesley Harding: "All Along the Watchtower" and (to a lesser extent) I'll Be Your Baby Tonight.
  • Nashville Skyline: "Girl from the North Country"'s duet version with Johnny Cash and "Lay Lady Lay" (although, while popular, not really representative of Dylan's songwriting). Well-known is also "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You".
  • New Morning: "The Man in Me", also thanks to its inclusion in The Big Lebowski, and "If Not for You" (the latter also being Covered Up by George Harrison).
  • Greatest Hits II: "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", although also "I Shall Be Released" is quite well-known thanks to The Band.
  • Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid: "Knockin' on Heaven's Door".
  • Planet Waves: "Forever Young".
  • Blood on the Tracks: "Tangled Up in Blue" and "Shelter from the Storm". Also "Simple Twist of Fate" and "Idiot Wind" are fairly well-known.
  • Desire: "Hurricane". Also "One More Cup of Coffee" is well-known.
  • Street-Legal: "Changing of the Guards", with "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)" as a runner-up.
  • Slow Train Coming: "Gotta Serve Somebody".
  • Saved: "Pressing On"
  • Shot of Love: "Every Grain of Sand"
  • Infidels: "Jokerman".
  • Empire Burlesque: "Dark Eyes"
  • Knocked Out Loaded: "Brownsville Girl".
  • Down in the Groove: "Silvio".
  • Oh Mercy: "Man in the Long Black Coat".
  • Time out of Mind: "Make You Feel My Love" and to a lesser extent "Not Dark Yet" and "Love Sick".
  • Love and Theft: "Mississippi".
  • Modern Times: "Thunder on the Mountain".
  • Rough and Rowdy Ways: "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" and "I Contain Multitudes" among audiences, "Murder Most Foul" among fans and for its Epic Rocking status.
  • Side Tracks: "Positively 4th Street" and, not too far behind, "Things Have Changed".
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Many of his early songs were essentially old folk songs with new topical lyrics, and were recognized as such.
  • A more recent example is "Beyond the Horizon" on Modern Times, which has practically the same melody as the old Tin Pan Alley standard "Red Sails in the Sunset". Eventually Dylan gave a cut of the royalties to the estates of the writers of "Red Sails".
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: When he switched from acoustic to electric, many of his fans were not happy.
  • When he switched from electric to country music for a couple of years, fans were not happy either. Ditto when he converted to Christianity and would only play his then-recent Gospel songs in concert for a while, totally abandoning any of his pre-Gospel work. Those who aren't diehard fans, who don't follow his work very closely, often have this reaction to his newer music (specifically his new, more gravelly, growly voice), and this applies double for when such people go to his concerts: questions of why he plays keyboard all or almost all of the entire time, and not his guitar, abound.
  • Even before "going electric", Dylan faced criticism from the folk community for ditching protest songs in favor of a more impressionistic, surreal type of lyricism.
  • Making a Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart which is a straight out Cover Album of Christmas Songs was also fuel for criticism.
• Values Resonance: While ''The Times They Are-a Changing" was made in The '60s, it's basically eternally relevant, since, as the saying goes, the only constant is change.
• Vindicated by History: Many of the above examples ended up getting high praise from both critics and fans years later - often, curiously enough, coinciding with the releases of the corresponding Bootleg Series releases.
  • Some of his live performances have also ended up getting this. The 17 May 1966 Free Trade Hall show from Manchester (often mislabelled as taking place at the "Royal Albert Hall") stands out as a particularly compelling example. Dylan was ruthlessly heckled during the electric set, and it is now regarded as one of the all-time great rock shows. (This may partially be down to technical problems with the sound system at the venue; people who were there for the show have claimed that the bootlegs of the performance and its official release on The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 sound vastly superior to the way the show sounded live).
  • The Christian period is still very divisive among fans, but a few individual songs are now considered classic Dylan: "Gotta Serve Somebody", "Precious Angel", "I Believe In You", "Pressing On", "Every Grain of Sand". Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Cash both cited "Every Grain of Sand" as a personal favorite (Cash had it performed at his funeral).
• Wangst: The narrator of "Idiot Wind" spends the majority of the song engaging in metaphorical wangst, before brilliantly reversing it in the final lines.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Just about everything Bob Dylan ever wrote. It doesn't even seem to matter what he says in interviews about what a song does or doesn't mean (although more often than not now he just avoids those sorts of questions altogether).
  • Bob never answered those questions; he's just more subtle now. Ed Bradley asked him in the 2000s if his latest album was a new departure, and Bob ran Bradley into the dirt with a story about how an old jazzman showed him this "mathematical chord progression" that emotionally effected the listener every time. Back in 1965, some (even more) hapless reporter asked Bob about his "message" (captured on camera in Don't Look Back) eliciting the scathing reply:
  "What's my message?" Bob seizes a mercury arc light from the coffee table. "'Keep a cool head and always carry a light bulb!'"
  • Or the Playboy interview by Nat Hentoff: Bob ended up editing all his answers into surrealistic evasions, with Hentoff's cooperation. (Allowing the subject to edit his answers is SOP at The Paris Review, interestingly. But not like that.)

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