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Why it matters
His first album of new original songs since Tempest in 2012, made largely of long, unhurried meditations on history, mortality and himself. It closes with the seventeen-minute "Murder Most Foul" on a disc of its own. The album went to number one in the UK.
Rough and Rowdy Ways arrived in June 2020, in the early months of the pandemic. Before it, Dylan released "Murder Most Foul", a long, slow meditation on the killing of John F. Kennedy and the American culture that followed it, which became his first song to top a Billboard chart. The album was made with his touring band and guests including the guitarist and producer Blake Mills. Its sound is quiet and spacious, moving between murmured ballads, heavy blues and slow, hymn-like pieces, with Dylan's voice close and calm. The songs range over history, myth, death, love and his own legend, packed with references to writers, musicians and films. "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" drifts for nearly ten minutes, and "Murder Most Foul" fills a disc of its own. Critics greeted it as one of the great albums of his late career, and it showed he was still writing at full strength at seventy-nine.
Track list · 10 songs
An aging narrator describes himself as a bundle of contradictions holding many selves at once.
time · death
Its page ›A defiant speaker insists he is no fake and stares down enemies and mortality alike.
faith · death
Its page ›A narrator roams graveyards and history gathering pieces to assemble the perfect person.
love · death
Its page ›An older man, having travelled and seen enough, decides calmly to commit himself completely to the one he loves.
love · time
Its page ›A man speaks to a dark, shadowy rider who stalks him and tells him to keep his distance.
death · time
Its page ›A farewell to a blues hero that mixes religion, rough living and devotion to the music.
faith · death
Its page ›An aging singer calls on the mother of the muses for inspiration and honours those who fought and marched before him.
war · time · love
Its page ›Over a slow blues, a man announces he has made an irreversible choice and will not turn back.
time · death
Its page ›The Florida island becomes a dreamlike refuge, a place of healing at the end of the road.
the road · America
Its page ›The 1963 killing of John F. Kennedy is retold alongside a vast roll call of the music and films of the era.
death · America · time
Its page ›
Where its songs lead
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