Ranking Bob Dylan’s album openers

No one will admit whether this or that song below “belongs” in a traditional sense. As I’ve said in previous chapters, I want entertainment. Every one of the albums below had trinkets Dylan could offer to listeners; a few had songs that grabbed listeners by the collars and shook their own trinkets. In the best category, I’m more interested in offering skeptics 1983’s “Jokerman,” the most fluent integration of Biblical tropes over dub beats I’ve ever heard.

The Hague

All the Tired Horses
You Wanna Ramble
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

Meh

Shot of Love
Hurricane
Changing of the Guard
Lovesick
Political World
Let’s Stick Together
Young at Heart

Sound, Solid

Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)
On A Night Like This
Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
Gotta Serve Somebody
The Times They Are a-Changin’
If Not for You
World Gone Wrong
A Satisfied Mind
You’re No Good
Duquesne Whistle
Frankie & Albert
I’m a Fool to Want You

Good to Great

Like a Rolling Stone
Jokerman
Tangled Up in Blue
Subterranean Homesick Blues
John Wesley Harding
Thunder on the Mountain
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
Wiggle Wiggle
Girl from the North Country (duet with Johnny Cash)
Odds and Ends
All I Really Want to Do
Blowin’ in the Wind

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