The song David Byrne and Jarvis Cocker both agree is Bob Dylan’s masterpiece
Just how do you pick out Bob Dylan’s definitive masterpiece? With an arsenal of songs that have gone down in history as all-time greats, narrowing it down to just a single track feels like a near-impossible task.
Given how his greatest strength lies in his ability to weave stories and allow the simplest of songs to unravel around the narratives, virtually all of his songs possess this almost unmatchable knack for taut lyricism, and they have done so since he first began releasing music in the 1960s right up until the present day.
While many other artists, including those who are considered to be contemporaries of Dylan’s, fall foul of letting their quality slide in the later stages of their careers, he has managed to stay at the highest level for the majority of his time in the spotlight. While there was a slight slump in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Dylan came back reenergised with the release of his 1997 album, Time Out of Mind, which many consider to mark the start of his late-career renaissance, and proof that he hasn’t lost his mojo.
However, most fans of Dylan would still revert back to the earlier years of his career when nominating the most outstanding moments of his catalogue, and with a range of narrative masterpieces such as ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ or ‘Hurricane’ all having arrived in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there are plenty of strong candidates to select from this era.
Considering people tend to think of artists from older generations with an air of nostalgia for what most would consider to be their heyday, it’s something of a rarity for people to look at their more modern efforts as being the high points of their career. However, given how Dylan has continued to remain a potent force within music who hasn’t squandered the opportunity to stay relevant, then it’s less of a surprise to learn that his peers think that his recent efforts are just as, if not more remarkable, than his early work.
In a 2021 feature for Stereogum, where 80 artists named their favourite Dylan song in honour of his 80th birthday, both David Byrne and Jarvis Cocker nominated the same modern epic from the folk icon, with them both suggesting that ‘Murder Most Foul’ was the pinnacle of his output despite having only been released the year before.
Byrne was effusive in his praise for the song, suggesting that despite it having been penned by a then-79-year-old, it showed that Dylan was still remarkably capable of cultivating a classic. “This song was inspiring to me,” the Talking Heads frontman argued. “Not as earth-shattering as ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ was to a wee lad, but important in a different way. I hear Dylan finding, at this stage in his career, a new way to approach these epic songs. He’s not done exploring yet. That’s inspiration for me for sure.”
Similarly, Cocker leaned into the fact that, despite being an older gentleman, Dylan’s ability to cherry-pick from numerous facets of the history of pop culture and tell a story about it over the course of 17 minutes is a feat that few others are capable of matching.
“It really felt like the right song at the right moment,” he said, referring to its release during the pandemic. He called it “a fevered summing-up of the pop culture of the Western world at the very instant that world appeared to be on the point of disappearing forever,” before going on to declare: “It’s a dream in song form […] It’s a complete work of genius.”
Not many other artists possess the talents to write a song as detailed and labyrinthine as ‘Murder Most Foul’, all while tapping into modern US history and culture for nigh-on 20 minutes, but not only does Dylan bravely attempt to tackle it, but he accomplishes it with relative ease. He may have a glut of songs to choose from stemming from his earliest years, but there’s no denying that ‘Murder Most Foul’ is perhaps a sign that Dylan’s talent is unbound by time.
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