What is the only Bob Dylan song to top the Billboard Hot 100?
In a near-seven-decade-long career where he has released 40 acclaimed studio albums and over 100 singles, you’d think that Bob Dylan has achieved everything he could possibly want to achieve in his life. To some degree, you’d be right, and the fact that he’s celebrated as one of the greatest and most influential folk artists to have ever graced the earth is surely another claim he can make to solidify his sense of pride in what he’s accomplished.
In addition to all of the magnificent music he’s released, he’s been honoured in plenty of ways, which are all indicative of his prowess as an artist. Dylan has won Grammy Awards, Academy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, a Nobel Prize, and even been given a Presidential Medal of Freedom—the list goes on. You name an accolade, and Dylan has probably either received it or at least been nominated or considered for it.
He’s also been a chart-topper with five of his albums in the US and has had reasonable amounts of success with other charts around the world, but there’s one where success has always evaded the legendary singer-songwriter, much to the surprise of fans and onlookers around the world.
You’d think that with a career so storied, Dylan would have topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on multiple occasions, and given how ubiquitous some of his songs have become for several generations, there should have been many times when the record-buying public would have bestowed such an honour on him. However, this is one area where he’s never managed to come out on top, and remarkably, the only Billboard singles chart he’s ever topped was the Rock Digital Song Sales chart in 2020, with ‘Murder Most Foul’.
Which Bob Dylan song topped the Billboard Hot 100?
You might be wondering how Dylan has become so successful around the world without a single number one hit in his home country to his name. Of course, plenty of his songs are beloved by many, and that includes the many tributes and words of praise that have been heaped upon him by his peers, and one way in which they’ve paid respect to his splendid body of work is through releasing covers of his best-known works.
Given that, the only time that Dylan has ever seen the top of the Billboard Hot 100 was through a cover version, and even that happened 60 years ago when The Byrds released their iconic interpretation of the Bringing It All Back Home track, ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. Released in April 1965, their version of the song arrived only a month after Dylan’s version was released, and found its way to the top of the charts in June of that year.
So, how did the cover even come to exist if it had only just been released by Dylan a mere matter of weeks before? In a pre-fame incarnation of The Byrds, known then as The Jet Set, their manager, Jim Dickson, managed to acquire an acetate of the song from Dylan’s publicist, and they began working on their own interpretation that was significantly more influenced by the psychedelic folk explosion, and by British invasion artists like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
When The Jet Set eventually morphed into The Byrds, they chose to record and release ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ as their debut single, having reworked it significantly by changing the time signature, key and tempo, but there were elements of the track that remained true to the original. Reportedly, Dylan was even invited into the studio by Dickson to hear the interpretation, to which he gave a rousing seal of approval.
Initially, Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark and David Crosby were ambivalent about whether the song would be a success, but the fact that it stormed to number one in multiple countries and essentially kick-started the psychedelic folk movement of the mid-to-late ‘60s was surely an indicator that they’d turned Dylan’s simple song into gold. It’s remarkable that this is the only time his exemplary songwriting has managed to top the US charts, and given how many hit-worthy singles he’s released and how many covers exist, you’d think Dylan would have had more success in this domain.
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