[albummaster]

Today's album of the day

Blonde On Blonde by Bob Dylan (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1966.
Country:
Overall rank: 32
Average rating: 88/100 (from 2381 votes).

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Tracks:
1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
2. Pledging My Time
3. Visions Of Johanna
4. One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)
5. I Want You
6. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
7. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
8. Just Like A Woman
9. Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine
10. Temporary Like Achilles
11. Absolutely Sweet Marie
12. 4th Time Around
13. Obviously 5 Believers
14. Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.

[DommeDamian]

There is perhaps no other musician I have more respect for than Bob Dylan. All the people who claim to like alternative music yet dislike or even disrespect him actually don't know anything about music and are not them when they're hungry, they're hungry cause they sink/avoid or bite the hand that feeds them. We'll go into how it all changed when Zimmerman released not only some of his first protest folk stuff like the classic Times They Are A-Changin', not only when he opened the door to the most creatively explosive music genre ever, psychedelia, with Mr. Tambourine Man (whereas the Byrds birthed Jangle Pop with their cover of it), but when he reinvented the album format as of what most of us know it today. Starting with his highly regarded Highway 61 Revisited, and then exceeding it with Blonde On Blonde - the first double album and the first no-artists-or-album-name-on-cover album.

Blonde On Blonde is, objectively speaking (influence/innovation, popularity, longevity), the greatest album in history (only comparables are Thriller, Abbey Road, banana, and maybe Dark Side). I will try to break it out, while simultaneously commenting on its impact on me (with stuff credited to the italian man). First and foremost is the popularity: the masterpiece has held its reputation as an all-timer, pretty much since people heard it for the first time in 1966. Throughout the last two decades, more has come out saying this is his best rather than Highway. Every man and woman in the industry and the music community were in awe of Dylan.

Secondly, we have influence slash innovation:
Even though non-classical music came on 12-inch vinyl about eleven years earlier, the Dylan man was the first to give it purpose and reason. By making lengthy pieces, the closer fills up the last side out of four, and they continuously rebirth themselves. Already ahead of most rockers and by writing fragments of music's foundation on Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, he took a prodigious step forward by officially making the first masterpiece in popular music. This album turned music into a form of mass communication and a form of personality and expression. Pre-BOB, pop, and rock were commercial enterprises, but then it became art. With Blonde On Blonde begins the process of quality control that would transform every record into a work of art. With Blonde On Blonde rock rivals jazz among the great musical conquests of the twentieth century. This album neatly separates amateurish dilettantism from knowledgeable and conscious art, as the Middle Ages separate from the Renaissance. Dylan never cared for critical response, actually only when they were too nice (that's why he later released Self Portrait). The ironic part about then releasing a double album is that every song is better than any song on any previous commercial album released, called it! On one side it completes the assimilation of British rock by folk music, on the other it personalizes the blues and folk, redressing both with marvelous esthetics saturated by creative arrangements of psychedelic derivation. Blonde on Blonde is a pioneering example of Dylan's ability to blend various musical styles. The album merges rock, blues, folk, and country in a way that was unprecedented at the time. This genre-blending set the stage for future rock artists to experiment beyond the boundaries of a single genre. Some could even say that I Want You is proto-twee pop. Generally, it uses traditional instruments but in unconventional way of composition, another way to say this helped birth alternative (even if The Byrds did that a year prior as a sound). We even get garage blues rock on Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat. In that case, can you hear how "session"-esque these songs sound? Because, yep, the recording process of the album is marked by improvisation and spontaneity. Inversely there, Dylan hones the circles of events in life on Stuck Inside A Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, which is also a series of political observations once you view the characters more deeply. The long ramblings of surreal irony are sweetened by raving reflections apace with the blues of desolation serenely in that piece's parade of senators, Shakespeare, and common people, another structurally repetitive "dream" that cycles and recycles itself. Wonderfully dark gem. Fourth Time Around uses subtlety in the guitar riff as a tremendous backbone for the rhythm and topic, creating art that is inexpressable, and exceptional like my heart getting a hundred kisses. And that's not even touching the mere poetry, lyrical confection, and enigmatic imagery in the words, then conveyed by Dylan's ever-ambiguous voice.
Deeper in the magnificent labyrinth of Bob Dylan are two long and visionary masterpieces, Visions of Johanna, with its majestic stately walk, and Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands, a long, solemn, moving hymn to beauty as a humane conception. It is last mentioned, an astounding lullaby for lovers, that breaks free from the abysmal constraints of the mind, that visits luminous mirages in supernatural valleys, that wind along tinkling eddies to form impalpable puffs of eternity. These are love songs; the free, wild, and unrestrained love of the other songs on Blonde On Blonde contrasts with the abstract love of these two allegorical poems, modern Dantesque visions that affirm a supernatural entity through the arcane vision of the female being. These masterpieces alone birthed the epics of indie rock and folk for the foreseeable future.

Thirdly, we got longevity:
The colorful, emphatic, engaging sonic jubilations of I Want You, Absolutely Sweet Marie, Just Like A Woman, One of Us Must Know, are not just masterpieces, but standards of the more "courteous" songwriting, cadenced melodies bristling with troubled emotions, portraits of psychological symbolic female characters that produce a sumptuous wave of emotions as soon as the words of the poet caress them. Richly colored by organ, harmonica, and guitar and gently pushed by brilliant rhythms, the phrasing flies in engaging suggestions. The longer joints twist along the spiral of a rich and articulate sound. The eternal banger Rainy Day Women remains the greatest party starter simply for its rich musicianship alongside Dylan's genius display of criticism in society (also ambiguous cause it could be about marijuana, which in that case, it came at the gateway of the psychedelic era), and Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat remains the most humorous blues song ever, simply because it started this form of comedy in a rock song, and the vocal performance is eccentric like all Dylan. At a party, we started dancing to Obviously 5 Believers, proving this song, rhythmically and danceable, still goes hard. The lyrics, they go hard too, nothing new for Bob of course but yanno.

Blonde on Blonde covers a wide emotional spectrum, from the whimsical and humorous to the deeply melancholic and introspective. All corners it covers, it does more wholesomely to me than any album released afterward managed to exude. On top of all this, Blonde On Blonde is MY New Years-album. I play it every 31st of December, as the supreme eventfulness of this record is equal to the different feelings and memories of the year passing by my mind one last time before the next year comes in, it's like revelation saved in time.
Almost sixty years have passed and this is still the best-written album in my opinion. It still sounds ambitious and exciting today, more so than almost any album I choose to hear otherwise. So there ya have it, the greatest album ever as well as up there in my top-tier favorites.
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[Johnnyo]

Excellent piece by DommeDamian. Very enjoyable read.

Put simply, this is one of the greatest albums ever recorded and should be an essential part of everyone's collection.

[CharlieBarley]

Blonde on Blonde was the first Dylan studio album I heard and it blew me away aged 16.
It casts such a spell over the listener. Well it did to this listener. It still does.

Currently I would place 3 Dylan albums above it. But his standards are so sublime even a fourth favourite album of his is still an all time classic.

For my money my Dylan top 5 would be:

1. The Times They Are A Changin'
2. Highway 61 Revisited
3. Blood On The Tracks
4. Blonde on Blonde
5. Bringing It All Back Home

But I have to agree with Johnny. Great review, DD.

[AAL2014]

My favorite Dylan work along with Blood On The Tracks. The album’s first 9 songs alone make for a magical and memorable listening experience.
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