Number 16: Blood on the Tracks

Album: Blood on the Tracks

Artist: Bob Dylan

Year: 1975

Information: Dylan was finally coming out of a rut of sub-par and scathingly reviewed albums. At this point, most had considered that the talent that had filled Bob's 60s work was gone. However, Dylan's next album would reassure most that it was still there. Dylan was going through a very difficult break up at this point, and it's ghosts fill out this album. Therefore, the songs are mostly of heartbreak and angered put downs, reminiscent of "Like a Rolling Stone." 

High Points: "Tangled Up in Blue" is a strong contender for the best song on this album, even the title is superb. Dylan tells the story of a man who becomes forlorn and thinks about the woman he used to love. He wants to know if she's changed at all and thinks about how her parents didn't like him. He reminisces about their previous escapades and wonders where it went wrong. Then it switches to present tense and we find him in a strip club, where he sees someone familiar. The rest of this song gets very vague and unclear, in the usual Dylan-style.

Low Points: This is a tough one, but I'm going to go with "Meet Me in the Morning." Although the song does have pleasant lines, such as "Look at that sun/sinking like a ship," I find the other songs to be better than this one. Preference, I suppose.

Is it Great? It's very good.

Touching on a few other songs, "Idiot Wind" is a very strong tune. It's filled with lyrics that talk are bitter, biting, contemptuous, but sad. The song is about a woman that the singer had lost and turned on. He decides that she is the epitome of lacking intelligence.

"Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," is another good song. It's seems a bit out of place on this album, seeing how it's cheery and not about the heartache of love lost. However, the song is almost nine minutes, but it never really seems nine minutes long. If you listen closely, you'll be taken on an odd journey through the many adventures of the Jack of Hearts. The song seems to have a deeper meaning to it, but the lyrics are so heavily coded that it's hard to determine any deep meaning from the song. 

---

All of the songs are enjoyable and most incorporate some kind of humor that really makes these songs great.