Empire Burlesque (studio album) by Bob Dylan
Condition: Used
Condition: Used
Bob Dylan bestography
Empire Burlesque is ranked 48th best out of 78 albums by Bob Dylan on BestEverAlbums.com.
The best album by Bob Dylan is Highway 61 Revisited which is ranked number 26 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 31,092.
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Empire Burlesque track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 71 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
Empire Burlesque rankings
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Empire Burlesque collection
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Empire Burlesque ratings
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Showing latest 5 ratings for this album. | Show all 138 ratings for this album.
Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
---|---|---|---|---|
02/12/2024 02:08 | JR | 1,059 | 81/100 | |
01/19/2024 03:06 | BorderFreeAndrew | 10,137 | 75/100 | |
01/04/2024 21:51 | jwammo12 | 914 | 79/100 | |
09/29/2023 08:07 | fabm0 | 5,977 | 59/100 | |
07/07/2023 03:10 | Skroskznik | 831 | 70/100 |
Rating metrics:
Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)
This album has a Bayesian average rating of 58.2/100, a mean average of 57.2/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 57.2/100. The standard deviation for this album is 18.6.
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Empire Burlesque comments
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If not for "Dark Eyes" this album would have sunk to the bottom!
With the overcooked arrangements, this album reminds me of Street Legal, with its female choruses and horn arrangements. But Street Legal sounds over-the-top, people don't like it (I do, but most don't) in part because it's so insistent and brashly passionate, it's in your face. This one isn't, it's tightly controlled and constrained, it doesn't storm around like a good Dylan album should. It tries to be polite, and good Dylan isn't that. Whereas Street Legal has songs that feel like they are written and sung out of need, this one feels like he was trying to come up with an album. Ron Wood's comments about the production process--you can read them at the Wikipedia entry on this album--are telling.
Also, the Wikipedia entry has an interesting note on the lyric borrowings; apparently some of the lyrics are lifted from Star Trek scripts and other unexpected sources, which I didn't know. Shades of the more recent album where he lifted from a translation of an obscure Japanese gangster novel, and another time when he took lines from Henry Timrod, a poet of the Confederacy. Dylan sometimes borrows for lyrics the same way TS Eliot did for The Waste Land--obscure sources, doesn't tell anybody he's doing it, it might only be discovered much later. He's a funny guy; this album isn't so funny though.
Dylan's shot at the title. He obviously took note of the success that Bruce Springsteen recently had with Born in the USA, and thought, I want some of that. Apparently, no one told Dylan that he was a middle-aged man with a wrecked voice and, oh, not very good songs. There was no way Bob was ever going to be a pop star. Actually, some of the songs aren't that bad at all. The problem with the album, is that it has all the hallmarks of the eighties, I mean, look at that album cover. Reedy synthesizers trying to replicate real instruments. Check out that awful harmonica sound on the opening track. Even so, that first track, tight connection to my heart, is actually quite good, but a lot of the songs are lost in that eighties production. They may have sounded better if only he had recorded them with just guitar, bass and drums. The last song, dark eyes, although an average acoustic track, almost sounds like genius after what's gone before. Born in the USA it is not. Extremely disappointing results that could have been better if he had recorded it correctly.
The vocals can be pretty whiny at times, but overall it's a decent album. (7.8)
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