Bob Dylan goes electric on the Newport Folk Festival in 1965
Introduction
In late August of 1965 Dylan’s best album Highway 61 Revisted was released. I don’t listen to Dylan very often, yet I do have quite the amount of Dylan albums in my home. I really like most of them as well, so it’s about time for an overview of my personal favorite Dylan albums.
Top 10
Hereby, I give you my 10 best Bob Dylan albums, ordered by release date.
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Bringing It All Back Home1965 Dylan was done with the acoustic folk and allowed electric instruments to enter his music. It resulted in a revolutionary album, which contained the great Subterranean Homesick Blues, for which Dylan made the world’s first ever music video. |
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Highway 61 Revisited1965 His first completely electrified album, astounding beauty. Contains Like A Rolling Stone, Ballad Of A Thin Man, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues and the heart wrenching Desolation Row. Rock can be intelligent too. |
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Blonde On Blonde1966 Varied, rich, this double album is unique in Dylan’s body of work. Never again would Dylan sound quite like this. Musically and lyrically Dylan is in fine form. |
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Blood On The Tracks1975 The end of Dylan’s marriage put to music. Emotional and raw, an impressive document about a new phenomenon that had been introduced to (American) society: divorce. |
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The Basement Tapes1975 Seven years after the recordings made their way to bootleg The Great White Wonder, they got their official release. Dylan and The Band were releaxed while working on some music. Essential! |
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Desire1976 Contains several angles and the highly personal Sara, which thematically harks back at the preceding Blood On The Tracks. The other songs deal with less personal affairs, yet do not fail to impress just as much. Contains the song Hurricane about Ruben Carter, the innocent boxer who was sentenced for murder. |
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Time Out Of Mind1997 Dylan surprised friend and foe with this beautiful album. Dylan proved that he could not only still make and sing beautiful songs, but those songs matched the quality of his classics, which were released 25 years earlier. An impressive feat! |
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The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert1998 May 17th, 1966: Dylan played his first electric set in England. One of the most bootlegged concerts of all time was officially released in 1998 as part of Dylan’s impressive and ongoing The Bootleg Series. N.B: |
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The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: The Rolling Thunder Revue2002 Another beautiful release in The Bootleg Series. A rendition of the The Rolling Thunder Revue, that made quite the impression at the time. It turned out to be the last big artistic contribution for a very long time. |
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Modern Times2006 Following Time Out Of Mind and Love And Theft, this was album number three in a row that contained astonishing new material. Great times! |
In closing
Which Dylan albums are your favorites? Let me know!
Video/Spotify
This story contains an accompanying video. Click on the following link to see it: Video: Bob Dylan – The 10 best albums. The A Pop Life playlist on Spotify has been updated as well.
