My 3rd favorite from Dylan (below Blood on the Tracks and Blonde on Blonde respectively). The production seems dated in comparison to Blonde on Blonde (which still sounds fresh today), but the songs are top notch. Probably the best album ever released up to that point. He was quickly surpassed by the Beatles late 60s output, but he was the king of music here and transformed popular music forever.

Absolutely love the lyrics (and I usually couldn't care less about lyrics), without the harmonica this album would be a 95 from me, but every time the harmonica kicks in the magic dies. Ballad of a thin man is the best track.

It often gets introduced as “the album that made people take rock ‘n’ roll more seriously and made rock mature”. Let me make this clear: rock ‘n’ roll never needed help from pretentious folkies and rock ‘n’ roll was never meant to be mature.
Having said that, the sound he creates shows he does understand rock ‘n’ roll, and he sounds rather soulful too from time to time. And it clearly had a great deal of positive influence on The Beatles, who - thank god - didn’t necessarily ‘mature’, but started playing with new ‘toys’... and they matured a bit, but not annoyingly like prog rock - yeah I said it. And The Beatles influenced Brian Wilson who then made psychedelic rock, and pretty much put the ‘60s on fire. So yeah, it kinda started the ‘60s.

A bit too lyrical for me but still very good.

One of my all time favorite albums. Ballad of a thin man is my favorite Dylan track. This album is fantastic tracks all the way through.

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Dylan uses his new fangled electric guitar and upsets folkies everywhere.

Dylan goes once again in to the blues, and for good. "Like a Rolling Stone" is a powerful song that changed how popular music was written, "Desolation Row" is a absolute mastercraft of lyricism, those two songs alone would make this a stonishing album, as far as a whole album goes, this
is what John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Mick Jagger set themselves to reach, and some of them made It.

So what’s with the rating? People are saying perfect, masterpiece etc then rating it lower?

5 stars all day

Not my favourite Dylan, but this thing's still unbelievable. Desolation Row and one of the best songs ever imo Like A Rolling Stone are highlights.