Bob Dylan, explored
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Cover of World Gone Wrong

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Why it matters

A second solo acoustic set of old songs, darker than the first, with Dylan's own liner notes on each track; it later won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album.

World Gone Wrong was recorded at home in Malibu in 1993, again with just Dylan's voice and acoustic guitar, and it went deeper into the old repertoire than its predecessor. Two songs come from the Mississippi Sheiks, one from Blind Willie McTell, and others from the long tradition of ballads about murder, war and wandering, ending with the hymn "Lone Pilgrim", which he learned from Doc Watson. The mood is heavier and the performances more stripped down, with his voice rough and close and his guitar loose and unhurried. Dylan also wrote his own liner notes, a sideways, playful essay on each song, tying it to its sources and to the troubles of the present. Critics praised its seriousness, and it won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. These two records reconnected him with the songs he had learned as a young man and prepared the ground for the original work that came later in the decade.

Track list · 10 songs

  1. 1World Gone Wrong
  2. 2Love Henry
  3. 3Ragged & Dirty
  4. 4Blood in My Eyes
  5. 5Broke Down Engine
  6. 6Delia
  7. 7Stack a Lee
  8. 8Two Soldiers
  9. 9Jack‐a‐Roe
  10. 10Lone Pilgrim

Where its songs lead

World Gone Wrong · Same theme asEverything Is Broken1989Both survey a world falling apart, the old Mississippi Sheiks song echoing his own Oh Mercy track.Love Henry · Same theme asFrankie & Albert1992Both are old murder ballads in which a woman kills the man who has been unfaithful to her.Delia · Same theme asLittle Sadie1970Both are old murder ballads about a man who shoots a woman and is brought to trial for it.Stack a Lee · Same theme asFrankie & Albert1992Both are old American murder ballads that Dylan recorded on his two acoustic albums of the early 1990s.Two Soldiers · Same theme asArthur McBride1992Both are old ballads he recorded in the early 1990s that set ordinary young men against the cost of soldiering.Jack‐a‐Roe · Same theme asCanadee-i-o1992Both are old ballads of a young woman who dresses as a man to follow her love, one to war and one to sea.

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