Tag Archives: Blood on the Tracks

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Song of the Day #5,424: ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ – Bob Dylan

Continuing my look at 1975, first by counting down my own top albums of that year.

#1 – Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks

I once named Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks my favorite album of the 70s, so it follows that it would be the best album of 1975. No surprise here.

First, though, I want to give an honorable mention to another great Bob Dylan album that came out the same year. The Basement Tapes, recorded in 1967 with The Band after Dylan’s motorcycle accident, was released eight years later. This double album is a gloriously laid back collection of roots rock ramblings. It likely would have cracked my top five but I figured I’d spread the love and note it here instead.

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Song of the Day #2,125: ‘Tangled Up in Blue (Live)’ – Bob Dylan

dylan3As with Ben Folds, the presence of Bob Dylan on this list of desert island songs was a no-brainer, but the specific song was the struggle.

I was tempted to go with a track from one of Dylan’s early albums — specifically The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan or Bringing it all Back Home — because those are the records I devoured as a young teenager first discovering the Bard.

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Song of the Day #1,434: ‘Idiot Wind’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 70s – #1
Blood On the Tracks – Bob Dylan (1975)

I doubt this pick will come as a surprise to anybody, particularly given that Bob Dylan hasn’t placed another album on this list. The 70s wasn’t his most successful decade, but it produced what may well be his best album.

Blood On the Tracks is the quintessential break-up album, a poetic chronicle of a dissolving marriage that simultaneously feels deeply personal and profoundly universal.

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Song of the Day #980: ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ – Bob Dylan

I started the week with Sea Change, Beck’s haunting breakup album, and I’m ending it with the greatest breakup album of all-time.

Released in 1975, Bob Dylan’s Blood On the Tracks is the high point of an unparalleled career (one I’ve explored exhaustively over nearly a year’s worth of Bob Dylan weekends).

On tracks such as ‘Tangled Up in Blue,’ ‘You’re a Big Girl Now,’ ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ and ‘Idiot Wind,’ Dylan explored the disintegration of his marriage through raw poetry and aching performances. Even the lighter, more romantic, songs — ‘Shelter from the Storm’ and ‘Buckets of Rain’ — are run through with sadness.

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Song of the Day #651: ‘You’re a Big Girl Now’ – Bob Dylan

Blood on the Tracks is, obviously, the fifth member of my Dylan Six — the six Dylan albums I consider his true untouchable masterpieces.

(On a side note, every time I write Dylan Six I’m reminded of the Dylan Four in Battlestar Galactica… the four crew members who discovered they were actually Cylons after being triggered by the words and music of ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ Geek detour concluded. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.)

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