Bob Dylan is legend! And he proved this massively with his 1965′ album Highway 61 Revisited. Personally I think this is Bob Dylan’s best album. It offers so many different songs, but beside that the lyrics are epic. Especially it’s closing track Desolation Row, has some of the best references ever seen in lyrics. It’s important to notice that when listening to Dylan you’re not only listening to a great musician but one of the best lyrics-writers of our time. His songs are all about the lyrics, focusing on many different themes.

This album has nine great songs but two of them attract me more than the other: its opener Like a Rolling Stone and the closing track Desolation Row.

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

The album starts off with what is probably considered as Dylan’s best song released until today: Like A Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone magazine listed it at number 1 on its list of “The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2004. This song changed music forever: all limitations were shattered with its lyrics, ambition and length. Every Rock-fan has heard this song atleast once, and I think it’s hard to find someone who dislikes this song.  Bruce Springsteen has described the beginning as the “snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind”. This song really tells a great story about how it’s like being out there on your own, without having anyone.

The rest of the songs also left their mark: he answered the question wether he had gone electric with From a Buick 6 and Tombstone Blues. With great electric guitar riffs blazing all over the songs.

The album concludes with the 11-minute epic Desolation Row. This is probably my favourite song on the album. The vocals are so calming and charming and the lyrics have such major references that it takes a library to understand the song. The song is all acoustic, which is quite strange considering that this album actually destroyed folk. It’s both moving as extraordinary rude.

- The Titanic sails at dawn and everybody’s shouting “Which Side Are You On?”

Tags: Bob Dylan, Rock & Roll

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 15:08 and is filed under Album Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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