What was Bob Dylan’s best-selling single?
He might have won just about every honour available to him over the course of his career, whether it be Grammy Awards, Hall of Fame recognition from both the Songwriters and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame, Oscars and Golden Globes or other prestigious accolades like the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Kennedy Center Honor, and even both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize, Bob Dylan has never been a remarkably high seller when it comes to singles.
His influence can be measured better in cultural currency than in sales figures, and while he can be noted as more of an album artist than a singles songwriter, this can be taken one step further to the point that Dylan can more accurately be described as a performing artist. For almost one hundred nights each and every year, fans the world over can flock to hear him sing his songs in person, rather than rush out to buy the discs which he has himself described at times as simply containing a blueprint, a guide as to how his songs should sound. In his own assessment, the place where they really belong and really come alive is on the stage.
Dylan’s attitude to his albums, and the songs that either do or don’t make it onto the finished releases, can be summed up perfectly by the interaction he had with journalist Larry ‘Ratso’ Sloman following the release of his 1983 album Infidels. Sloman had been present for the recording sessions and had been particularly taken aback by the incredible song ‘Blind Willie McTell’. When the album came out, however, the song was nowhere to be seen, so ‘Ratso’ phoned Dylan to ask what gives, and what happened to the song, anyway? “And, without missing a beat,” Sloman remembers, “He goes, ‘It’s no big deal, Ratso. It’s just an album. I’ve made twenty-two. And I’ll make more.’”
But even with his relaxed approach to studio recording, it is surprising that Dylan had to wait until 2020 to have his first-ever number one single. And, of course, it was in typical Dylan-esque fashion then, that that maiden number one came in the shape of a 17-minute free-form paean about the Kennedy assassination and the dying sigh of American popular culture and empire in the half century since, in the epic ‘Murder Most Foul‘. While it is a monumental song, a triumph of American art and almost undoubtedly even the defining, and greatest, American artistic statement of the 21st century so far, it’s not the sort of song you’d expect to hit the top of the pops.
Neither was ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, though, which came close to topping the charts on its 1965 release, going up to number two and only being kept from the summit by The Beatles’ ‘Help!’ in America (in the UK, it was kept from the number one spot by The Rolling Stones’ ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ as well as Sonny & Cher’s Dylan-pastiche ‘I Got You, Babe’). ‘Rainy Day Women ♯12 & 35’ was just an unlikely candidate to be a huge hit, with its overt pun insisting that everybody must get stoned in the refrain, when it went from number 12 and 35 to second in the charts.
Dylan has been a mainstay in the charts when other people sing his songs, though. Artists as diverse as Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, Manfred Mann, Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison, Olivia Newton-John, Guns N’ Roses, Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, Adele and Darius Rucker have all had great success with Dylan’s material, including several number ones.
But what was the biggest-selling single released by Bob Dylan?
But it was Dylan’s first certified hit, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, which remains his biggest-selling song to this day. At over six minutes, radio stations had been tentative to even play the song at first, so a three-minute radio edit had been prepared, but following huge demand and an overwhelming response, the full single would routinely find itself in regular rotation on the airwaves. Bruce Springsteen later remembered hearing the song on the radio for the first time, and how hearing it for the first time changed his life, saying that the opening snare shot of the song “sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind”.
In fact, the song was so radical, so popular and well-liked, that even his most combative and aggressive fans would lay down their arms against him, would stop booing for a few minutes and applaud the song when he brought it to the road with The Band in 1965 and ‘66. Though he hasn’t dusted it off in concert for around six years now, it was always a crowd favourite, liable to start a mass singalong in the audience, on any of the 2,000+ times Dylan did decide to play it, proving that the song is as enduringly popular and just as vivid, imaginative, freeing, expansive and full of life as it was when it first came out 60 years ago.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.