Tag Archives: Highway 61 Revisited

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Song of the Day #6,078: ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ – Timothee Chalamet

Continuing my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2024
#5. A Complete Unknown

It occurred to me after the second time I’d watched and loved director James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown that I’d never before seen a biopic about an artist whose work means as much to me as Bob Dylan’s.

Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Elton John, Ray Charles… all legends, no doubt. But none whose music has enraptured me for nearly four decades. None whose albums I dissected as a nerdy high school sophomore, gobbling up every line of poetry, every harmonica note, every nasally vocal.

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Song of the Day #4,678: ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ – Bob Dylan

Three Dylan songs in four days. The Random iTunes Fairy is really giving old Bobby a workout this month.

Here’s another of Dylan’s early classics, the title cut from his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. This was Dylan’s first “rock” album, with only closer ‘Desolation Row’ recorded on acoustic instruments.

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Song of the Day #4,307: ‘From a Buick 6’ – Bob Dylan

‘From a Buick 6’ is the fourth track on Bob Dylan’s classic 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. A rollicking blues romp fueled by Al Kooper’s distinctive work on the organ, this is a bawdy and hilarious jolt of adrenaline on one of the greatest albums of all time.

Apparently ‘From a Buick 6′ was Steve Jobs’ favorite song, or at least he said as much during one of his celebrated Apple product presentations.

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Song of the Day #1,458: ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 60s – #5
Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan (1965)

It never ceases to amaze me that Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited was released just five months after Bringing it all Back Home. And to top that off, The Beatles released Help! and Rubber Soul in the four following months.

How amazing must it have been to be a music fan in the mid-60s? Not just every year but seemingly every month brought some new masterwork by a rotating cast of artists who were in the process of defining popular music.

Kids today get what? Justin Bieber and Katy Perry?

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Song of the Day #595: ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ – Bob Dylan

I deliberately avoided mentioning ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ in my write-up of Highway 61 Revisited yesterday because I didn’t want to steal the thunder from today’s post. That’s a bit like writing about Michaelangelo works displayed in Florence without mentioning the David.

For all of the many genres and musical styles Dylan has explored, all of the topics he’s covered, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ remains in many ways the quintessential Dylan song. It was voted as the #1 song of all-time in a Rolling Stone survey of musicians and critics published in 2004. And whether or not you share that opinion, it’s impossible to deny that it’s one of the few songs that unquestionably deserves to be in the running.

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