‘Love Minus Zero/No Limit’

Singing of a love so strong and so certain that no one needs to say anything, Bob Dylan deals in total contentment on ‘Love Minus Zero’. Sitting on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, ‘Love Minus Zero’ might be one of his most straightforward love songs as even the music is delightfully upbeat, sounding exactly like a man in love wandering through a joyous life.

It’s a song about the beauty and delight to be found in calmness. Celebrating a lover who brings peace to his life and romanticising their relationship of simplicity and undoubted devotion for one another, the track sees Dylan wandering through the world, looking at other couples and trusting that the love he’s found is the best of them all.

‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’

With a bluesyness to the music, this track from Nashville Skyline is a gorgeous take on intoxicating, addicting desire and the inability to pull yourself away from your love.

Across many of Dylan’s love songs, the same theme emerges: the musician celebrates a relationship that seems to take him away from the stress of his life or the world at large, allowing him to hide away from it all with the person he loves. ‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’ is an obvious take on this, as he sings, “I should have left this town this morning,” before concluding that he’d much rather stay right here.

‘I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You’

Even on his latest releases, Bob Dylan is still getting romantic. Sung in his ageing voice, with the wisdom of long life and career, ‘I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You’ on Rough And Rowdy Ways is almost reminiscent of a Sinatra song, sounding like it could be written into history’s songbook as a true standard of a love song.

With a lullaby-like quality to it, it’s one of his calmest compositions on the topic, powered by more plain-speaking, sentimental lyrics like “I’ll lay down beside you when everyone’s gone”. Still singing as a kind of troubadour as he romanticises the act of surrendering to his heart and giving into his feelings, Dylan’s take on love hasn’t changed much at all.

‘She Belongs To Me’

A lot of harsh words were shared in the complex connection between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. In a kind of extended will-they-won’t-they, muddied by other issues like Dylan’s fame and his turn away from protest music, their songs for one another were often more heated or confrontational. But before all that, there was ‘She Belongs To Me’, a song that feels truly honouring of Baez and deeply adoring.

The title is ironic as he sings a long story about a lover who is powerfully independent. “She’s got everything she needs,” he begins as in this song, he is not someone his lover needs, but she is someone he wants as he declares, “She can take the dark out of the nighttime / And paint the daytime black,” as a poetic ode to her influence over him.

‘Lay Lady Lay’

Simple and seductive, this Dylan hit boils love down to two things: the desire to be close to someone and the desire to know them. On the one hand, it’s an erotic song as he croons, “Lay, lady, lay / Lay across my big brass bed,” yearning to have the one he wants in his bedroom, to have a moment in private.

But beyond those choruses, this is a love song that longs to go deeper. “Whatever colours you have in your mind / I’ll show them to you / And you’ll see them shine,” he sings as one of his most romantic verses, asking the one he loves to reveal herself to him, open up and let him into her mind, so he can reflect it back and show her how beautiful she is beyond just her body.

‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’

A lot of Dylan’s most romantic love songs also take the form of a kind of farewell. Similar to ‘Boots Of Spanish Leather’ or even ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’, there is sadness in these songs, as if loving and loss always go hand in hand, and you can’t enjoy one without the other.

On ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’, he dives deep into that feeling, wondering if love can even truly be enjoyed or exciting without the lingering threat of heartache when it’s all over. Wondering if a good thing is too good to be true, the song dances between cautious doubt and some of his grandest sentiments on love, singing, “I could stay with you forever and never realise the time.”

‘Wedding Song’

But speaking of grand sentiments, no Dylan song is ever better than ‘Wedding Song’, a track so declarative and so looming with love that it’s almost overwhelming. “I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love,” he sings, describing a feeling so consuming that it seems to go beyond anything he’s ever known before.

It’s an intense one and unlike anything else he’s ever written on the feeling. Any ounce or hint at doubt is dropped as ‘Wedding Song’ speaks to a devotion so complete that it is not only unconditional but is endless as he sings, “I was born to be with you, you were born to be my bride,” writing this love affair into the stars as something that was always meant to be.

‘Sara’

Dylan is famously private, especially when it comes to his relationships, so to straight up name a song after his wife, Sara Lownds, is already a bold and romantic move from the artist. Making it clear that this love song is a work of non-fiction, the verses move through their life together, writing scenes of their domestic world and their days with their children into a gorgeous and deeply adoring poem.

However, that does mean that it’s an incredibly specific song. This isn’t one the audience is going to be able to relate to unless your name is Sara and you also happen to have drunk at the same bars in Portugal, hung out at the same beaches, or stayed up all night at the same hotel. But the beauty in the song lies in exactly that. This isn’t a plain and simple love song aiming to hook into a universal feeling. This is a personal gift to the woman he loved, singing her name over and over as he croons, “Sweet love of my life.”

‘If Not For You’

No matter who sings this song, whether you prefer George Harrison’s version or Dylan’s own, it’s beautiful. It’s full of gorgeous imagery and metaphors about a love that acts as a light in the darkness, singing, “If not for you, winter would have no spring,” as if this love is the ultimate force of goodness and optimism in the world.

The premise is so simple as Dylan is essentially just saying what Brian Wilson sang in his own epic on love; “God only knows what I’d be without you.” It’s a sentiment expressed time and time again in works of love, written in so many different ways as people try to express how lost they would feel without this one person who came into their lives as a kind of saving force. ‘If Not For You’ is Dylan’s attempt and he does it beautifully, with even that titular phrase holding so much emotional weight.

‘Make You Feel My Love’

It’s an obvious choice, but of course, it’s this one. There would be no other option for the title of Bob Dylan’s most romantic song than ‘Make You Feel My Love’; a song so globally and timelessly acclaimed as one of the most beautiful love songs ever written that it has become adopted as a true standard. Covered time and time again by artists across eras and genres, it’s a song that never seems too dull, its emotional power never weakens, and with each listen, zoning in on different lyrics, it only becomes more moving and impactful.

It’s also one of the most-giving songs Dylan has ever written. A lot of the time, love songs are about how someone else makes the singer feel. In Dylan’s world, they’re often about the things a lover does for him to help him feel happier or better, but here, he’s offering his love outward. It’s a song that yearns to support someone else as Dylan wants to make his love known in whatever way his partner would feel it strongest or want it best. As the verses run through the things he’d do or give in order to make the person he loves truly feel moved, it’s a song that gets right at the heart of romance as an act of service and a language with which to connect.