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Why it matters
Written mostly with Robert Hunter and colored by David Hidalgo's accordion, it has a loose, border-town feel. It entered the charts at number one in both the US and UK.
Together Through Life began when the French director Olivier Dahan asked Dylan for a song for a film, and that one song grew into an album recorded quickly in late 2008. Dylan wrote almost all of it with Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead lyricist he had worked with before. The sound comes from Chicago blues and the music of the Texas-Mexico border: shuffling rhythms, a low twanging guitar from Mike Campbell, and above all David Hidalgo's accordion, which colors nearly every song. The mood is relaxed and often playful, with love songs, road songs and wry complaints rather than the grand statements of his previous records, and his voice is at its most gravelly. One song borrows heavily from a Willie Dixon blues, and Dixon is credited. Reviewers generally liked it as a loose, easygoing side step, and it reached number one in both the US and the UK.
Track list · 10 songs
Over a Latin-tinged groove the singer tells his love that there is nothing beyond what they have together.
love · time
Its page ›A lonely man drifts through his days missing someone and finding the world harder to bear alone.
loss · love
Its page ›A man grumbles, half in jest, that his wife's home town is the root of all his troubles.
love
Its page ›A traveler offers advice to anyone heading to Houston and other Texas towns, remembering people and places he knew.
the road · America
Its page ›A man speaks to his own heart, which has let go of a love he still cannot forget.
love · loss
Its page ›A swaggering man declares his devotion to a woman named Jolene and boasts of his own power.
love
Its page ›A lonely man clings to a dream of the woman he loves, the one thing keeping him going.
love · loss · time
Its page ›A restless man urges a woman to dance and shake, mixing lust with grumbling about his troubles.
love
Its page ›An older man senses a shift in his life and hopes it will bring him closer to the woman he wants.
time · love
Its page ›Amid broken homes, corruption and decay, the singer keeps insisting with a straight face that everything is fine.
America · loss
Its page ›
Where its songs lead
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