“The songs just don’t work”: The eras that Bob Dylan regrets most
Even the most established and esteemed artists have portions of their career that they’re not entirely proud of. Perhaps they took a sonic risk that didn’t quite pay off, maybe an album was left underdeveloped or rushed, or maybe they just played it too safe and failed to engage audiences in the process. Creative missteps are natural, particularly for those artists who sustain lengthy careers in the industry, and even a songwriting great like Bob Dylan has made a mistake or two.
Penning songs full of protest and poetry in equal measure, Dylan carved out a space for himself in the 1960s as one of the leading lyricists of his generation. He paired folk strums and harmonica hums with intricate stories of love and hate, war and peace, loss and longing, and every human emotion or experience that sits somewhere in between. In the process, he became many people’s pick for the best songwriter of all time.
Dylan has hundreds of songs to his name, many of them sitting amongst the most well-known and well-loved tunes in music history. But the folk legend has also made a few blunders along the way, such as the regretful cruelty of ‘Ballad in Plain D’. With such a lengthy career and such an expansive catalogue, it makes sense that Dylan had a few sonic stumbles in his time, but the folk lyricist once shared his regrets surrounding an entire era of his career.
During a conversation with Rolling Stone, Dylan explained the direction he had taken on his 1997 album, Time Out of Mind, which he suggested wasn’t meant to be listened to at home. “Most of the songs work,” he explained, “Whereas before, there might have been better records, but the songs don’t work.” Dylan picked out his work from the 1970s and 1980s as a specific example.
“I’ll stick with what I was doing after Time Out of Mind, rather than what I was doing in the seventies and Eighties, where the songs just don’t work,” he affirmed. Dylan released a series of career-defining records in the 1960s, such as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Blonde on Blonde, which featured some of his most well-known songs.
Dylan took quite a different route in the 1970s, diving into genres such as country and even Christian rock. The iconic Blood on the Tracks was released during this era, which has become one of the songwriter’s most beloved offerings, but Dylan was right that the songs weren’t quite working like they once did.
When it hit the 1990s, then, Dylan looked to rectify the issues he saw in his songwriting from earlier decades, to create songs that “worked” again. There were still elements of the genres that characterised his slightly more disjointed work in the 1970s, such as country, but it felt like Dylan was back. It wasn’t just the songwriter himself who felt this change, either.
Time Out of Mind was helmed as a return to form for the legendary lyricist, sweeping awards season and amassing widespread acclaim. Dylan continued on this path in the years that followed, finally finding his feet again after a couple of decades spent in sonic limbo. Though Dylan may have some regrets about the era, the slight misstep has had no bearing on his legacy. He is still known as the greatest songwriter in music history.
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