The five best unreleased Bob Dylan songs
It speaks volumes that Bob Dylan was the first and only songwriter to date to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Much of his music over the past six decades has transcended mere audible enjoyment and deserves a read, taken as poetry as well. Dylan’s unique ability to convey striking imagery while leaving narratives to the artistic hands of mystery has served him exceptionally well.
From his formative years as a Woody Guthrie fanatic circling the coffee houses of New York City through his meteoric rise as a folk rock icon and beyond, Dylan’s style had evolved, but a knack for lyricism and impassioned delivery has remained constant. Over six decades of prolific studio time has left Dylan with a mountain of material for young fans to sift through, and at 82, the songwriter doesn’t appear to be slowing down.
Naturally, throughout his vast and varied career, Dylan has had to discard several half-baked song ideas and demos when compiling albums, leaving a colossal archive of unreleased off-cuts. Luckily, many of these never-before-heard tracks have been rediscovered across Dylan’s celebrated Bootleg Series volumes and online leaks many years later.
Today, we explore some of Dylan’s discarded gems with a list of his five greatest unreleased songs. The list includes a handful of ballads and a reimagined poem by Charles Badger Clark, all recorded during the first 30 years of Dylan’s career.
The best unreleased Bob Dylan songs:
‘To Fall In Love With You’
During the Hearts of Fire sessions between August 27th and 28th, 1986, Dylan recorded a rough demo of an unfinished song called ‘To Fall In Love With You’. The smooth ballad is treated to some of Dylan’s most emotional lyrics and, for an unfinished piece, crystal clear and well-produced instrumentals. Dylan evidently didn’t deem the track worthy or befitting of release during the sessions, but fortunately, it has been clutched from the sands of time for our perpetual enjoyment.
“A tear goes down my day is real/ But your drying eye upon the shame/ Each needs a road for me from you/ What paradise? What can I do?/ That die for my and the day is dark/ I can’t believe for your touch/ What I could find oh time is right/ If I fell in love to fall in love/ To fall in love with you,” Dylan sings in possibly one of his greatest love ballads.
‘I Can’t Leave Her Behind’
‘I Can’t Leave Her Behind’ is another lovelorn ballad Dylan sadly didn’t see fit for commercial release. This hidden gem materialised during several jam sessions with guitarist Robbie Robertson in various hotel rooms during the 1966 European tour. Much of the track is improvised, adding to its raw beauty, and although Dylan never intentionally recorded it, filmmaker DA Pennebaker captured threads of the sessions.
The below recording of ‘I Can’t Leave Her Behind’ consists mainly of a jam session captured at the North British Station Hotel (now the Millennium Hotel) in Glasgow, Scotland. The track, as heard below, has been meticulously restored, with various pauses and scuffs seamlessly eradicated.
‘Making A Liar Out Of Me’
‘Making A Liar Out Of Me’ was a long-forgotten piece recorded on September 26th, 1980, amid Dylan’s Christian rock excursion. This particular session occurred between the 1980 album Saved and 1981’s follow-up Shot of Love. This period of Dylan’s career was by no means laudable, but it was hard to deny the songcraft displayed in tracks like ‘Every Grain of Sand’ and ‘Covenant Woman’.
While it doesn’t strike the same arresting chord as some of Dylan’s contemporary hits, ‘Making A Liar Out Of Me’ certainly could have added vigour to Shot of Love. The track hears Dylan lament changes in his loved one through organ bursts and country guitar progressions. It was eventually released as part of Trouble No More – The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1981.
‘Spanish Is the Loving Tongue’
Through the decades, Dylan has recorded several rough versions of ‘Spanish Is the Loving Tongue’. The verse is based on ‘A Border Affair’, a classic American West poem published by Charles Badger Clark in 1907. The poem was first set to music by Billy Simon in 1925; 12 years later, Clark was named Poet Laureate of South Dakota.
Though the song’s lyrical structure isn’t Dylan’s, he offers unfettered and soulful vocals to implant personal experience into another’s words. The version heard below was recorded in the late 1970s during the Self Portrait sessions and was finally shared as part of 2013’s The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971).
‘Series of Dreams’
‘Series of Dreams’ is a soaring and passionate song that feeds off the impetus of a fast and steady rhythm. Dylan originally recorded the track on March 23rd for his 26th studio album Oh Mercy, but it was ultimately omitted amid disagreements with his producer Daniel Lanois. In 1991, the original recording was remixed with overdubs for inclusion on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.
“Although Lanois liked the song, he liked the bridge better, wanted the whole song to be like that,” Dylan wrote of the track in Chronicles: Volume One. “I knew what he meant, but it just couldn’t be done. Though I thought about it for a second, thinking that I could probably start with the bridge as the main part and use the main part as the bridge…the idea didn’t amount to much and thinking about the song this way wasn’t healthy. I felt like it was fine the way it was – didn’t want to lose myself in thinking too much about changing it.”
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