Top Ten Thursday: Bob Dylan’s Ten Best Albums

Bob Dylan. The uncontested poet laureate of rock n’ roll. Nearly no man has contributed more to music in the course of his lifetime, and certainly no man has contributed more words. Fifty years after his debut, Dylan’s release of his newest album Tempest (released on 9/10) marked his thirty-fifth studio release. Thirty-five albums and not a single one of them has an album cover that is worth a damn. Most of the covers are just a sad-sacked face or an illustration of the same. Ok, actually I find most of them to be pretty cool, but still, he could stand to be a bit more humble. Cover art aside, the content of the album is all we really care about, and the content is gold. It’s hard to deny that his early career seems to trump the latter. Not that his more modern material isn’t good, but he just seemed to have peaked a bit early. Plus Dylan not only has one of the more prolific music careers of any living artist, but he has also went through many different sounds and phases. From folk, to rock, to blues, to christian, to country, Dylan has really done most everything. He will forever go down as one of the absolute “greats”, and here is our list of what we think are the greatest albums of “the greats”.

 
10. Bringing It All Back Home

Bringing It All Back Home was Bob’s fifth album, and believe it or not despite the success of his previous albums, it contained his first chart topping single. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” not only gained Dylan some mainstream notoriety, it also garnered one of the most popular (certainly one of the most parodied) music videos in history. Other highlights include the infamous one-take wonder that IS “Maggie’s Farm” as well as “Tambourine Man” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The album helped further drive the wedge from he and his folk fans that were upset with the “electric Bob”, and continued to show us that Dylan has some big cahunas and isn’t afraid to try new things and change his focal point.

 
9. Nashville Skyline

Dylan’s ninth album just so happens to fit nicely in our ninth spot on the list. With Nashville Skyline we are introduced to yet another completely new side of Dylan. He had moved to Nashville at this point in his life, and wouldn’t you know it, the honkey tonk city pulled the country music side out of Bob like we’d never heard before. It even features a Johnny Cash guest spot to boot. For the first time Bob seems relaxed, content, happy … so happy that he’s even grinning on his album cover. The lyrics aren’t quite so intense, and he even seemed to have taken on a new singing voice. Even musically it seemed to have a very pleasant flow. The album is even home to “Nashville Skyline Rag”, one of those rare Dylan tracks with no words. Sounds like a paradox right?

 
8. The Basement Tapes

Before crafting this list, I was under the impression that The Basement Tapes was more of a mix tape than an actual album. Although I was wrong, it is indeed an actual LP that was released by a label, I wasn’t exactly very far off. Although the twenty-four tracks on The Basement Tapes weren’t officially released until this album dropped in 1975, most of them were released via bootlegged albums already, and pieces of this album were recorded as far back as 1967. It is really a barrage of the days when Dylan lived with The Band in “The Big Pink” and random material that was later either used, re-recorded, or re-written, with some new material thrown on top of it all. Although somewhat jumbled this is one of Dylan’s most fun albums. It was the first released that actually gave The Band the backing credit they sincerely deserved and is also credited by many as the birth of alt-country.

 
7. The Times Are A Changin’

Dylan’s third album was his first to contain entirely original work. It was also one of his darkest, most socially slanderous albums he has ever released. Highlights include the title track itself, “Ballad of Hollis Brown”, “North Country Blues”, and one of the most powerful songs of Dylan’s catalogue, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”, in which Dylan recounts the 1963 killing of a black female barmaid by a wealthy racist tobacco farming farmer. The douchebag brutally beat Hattie to death after she apparently “took too long to deliver” the man’s bourbon. The sack of shit only served six months in a county lockup before he was back free again. Every time I hear that track, I can’t believe that was our society whilst my parents were just teenagers. Quite shattering.

 
6. Desire

Bob’s seventeenth album and one of his best sellers to date. Kicking off strong with one of Dylan’s most notorious protest songs “The Hurricane” the album never ceases to surprise it’s listener. From the delicate background vocals of Emmylou Harris to the delicate background violin, mandolin, piano, congas, and a few other instruments that were never exactly feature on a Dylan album before, every song is a rare treat. With its length being as epic as it’s narrative twelve verse stature, “Joey” clocks in at over eleven minutes, which is no record for Dylan’s studio work, but great in length nonetheless. It plays like a Scorcese film as it chronicles the life of morally sound gangster, and is a Dylan deep track for the ages.

 
5. Blood On the Tracks

What you’d think was Bob’s most personal album is entirely discredited so by the man himself. Even though he was going through the deepest depression of his life, a divorce from Sara, his beloved first wife of twelve years, a serious battle between record companies, and relentless criticism from his peers resulting in stints of total reclusiveness, he claims the songs were inspired by Anton Chekhov stories. I claim bullshit. Dylan is a notorious liar and extremely self conscience at times. I think it’s just hard for him to admit that through his suffering, he wrote some of the more heart-felt and heart-wretching songs of his career. I’d say the proof is in the pudding.

 
4. Highway 61 Revisited

Dylan’s first full dive into electric music came at album six. If his die hard folk fans hadn’t disowned him already, they sure did with this treat. By most other critics, it is widely considered Dylan’s magnum opus. The thematic elements of the album are actually quite cynical but it’s almost well masked by some of the seemingly upbeat tones. This doesn’t apply for songs such as “Ballad of a Thin Man” or “Desolation Row”, but it essentially applies for all the rest, including the album’s opener and what has to be Bob’s most well known track, “Like A Rolling Stone”. This song has so many elements that could make it a #1 pop single, yet so many elements that should keep it far from doing so. Like many Dylan albums, every track on this album could be analyzed and broken into a lasagna stack of layers but, I just don’t have time to do so … right now.

 
3. John Wesley Harding

In 1967, albums like Sgt Peppers and Satanic Majesties … were being released in response to Pet Sounds which was released a year prior. All the while, Bob releases his most stripped down, straight forward album in years. Dylan was working with The Band on recordings that would ultimately become The Basement Tapes. Something about working with those Americana magicians must have inspired him to return to his roots, because he did, and with a bang! Songs that sang like ancient old fables such as “John Wesley Harding” and “All Along the Watchtower” were merely accompanied by simple acoustic instruments again. The release of this album showed that Dylan had not lost his less-than-simplistic songwriting skills, nor his storytelling ability. It also proved his confidence in his own music.

 
2. Blonde On Blonde

Like many of his early albums, half of Blonde On Blonde is the equivalent of a greatest hits album. It’s the caliber of the remaining tracks that puts this album above the rest. When you listen to this album, it’s almost as if they got it backwards. The songs that weren’t popular are better than the ones that were. This wasn’t common place for albums back then, and I think that is why it stands out as such a rarity to us today. It also marked Dylan’s big move to Nashville, which was the beginning of a quick turnaround from Highway 61 and bridged the gap to albums such as John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. I think more than any other album this one demonstrates that Dylan was more than just a controversial hipster icon. He didn’t want to represent a crowd of followers nor did he want to just complain about things. He had truth to himself, and proved that by leaving the scene and finding Nashville.

 
1. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Dylan’s sophomore splendor showed world what the young lad was made of. He was clever, very smart, seemingly informed, but didn’t take himself extremely seriously. He also had a simplicity and style about him. His music seemed to effortlessly pour from him and his lyrics were almost Shakespearean but in modern tongue. When people are introduced to him nowadays, that awestruck feeling still exists. This album in particular, completely embodies that spirit to its very core. In fact if I were to pick one Dylan song that encapsulates that entire essence, I’d say it is a track that didn’t even exist on the earliest pressings of Freewheelin’, but I am happy it made the rest. I’m talking about “Talkin’ World War III Blues”. The rest of the album consists of staples such as “Blowin’ In the Wind”, “Masters of War”, “Girl From the North Country”, “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall”, “Corina, Corina”, and the masterpiece that is “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”. Never has there been an album that can speak so genuinely about the time it was born in. Nor an album that is so witty and clever yet still heartbreaking and shocking. Dylan has released thirty-five albums, and almost all are acclaimed and loved by most everyone, including us at LxL. That being said, he could have ended his career with this album and he’d still be a living legend.

 
The “Just Missed Our List” List:

Todd: New Morning

Although New Morning was the return of “old Dylan” in many ways (most notably his voice), it became home to a weirder side of Dylan that we had yet to hear. It was almost a poppy side of Dylan. Not a single track breaches the four minute mark, which is almost unheard of for an entire Dylan album. Notoriously Dylan’s songs are all subject to wonderful covers, and the opening track “If Not for You” had to be one of the more uniquely and prolifically covered tracks of his career. George Harrison, Bryan Ferry, and even Olivia Newton John recorded versions for their own albums. Among other great tracks, it also holds the theme song for The Big Lebowski. It’s a very under appreciated album, but that’s just like … my opinion, man.

 
Wes: Modern Times

Aside from his Christmas album (which was almost Austin’s just missed) Modern Times is probably the closest thing to a cover album you will ever see Bob release. Most of the tracks are “adaptations” to older songs that have a modern twist (hence the album title). It is a concept that truly unique and I am surprised it hasn’t been adopted by others. It was recorded after the longest hiatus between albums Bob has ever taken, and although his aging in those five years was notable, the result was very well received.

 
Austin: Tempest

Austin always likes it young and fresh, and although Tempest is fresh; Dylan is far from being young. However in Austin’s mind his music is not. You see, Austin believes Dylan’s career is the musical equivalent to Benjamin Button, which would put Tempest sittin’ nice and pretty at right about a prime nineteen or so. This is a perfect storm for Austin. This album really marks Dylan’s first (aside from one track) completely original album in eleven years. Some rumored that this would be Dylan’s last album, which Dylan quickly debunked as not being the case. I suppose only time will tell if this Tempest will hold a different fate for its author as The Tempest.
 
So there is the list. Let us know what we unforgivably missed, or got right, but still feel free to just rip on us in general …

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