Bob Dylan - A Headful of Ideas
May 26, 2026 · 22 min · 11 segments
Chris dives into some of the weirdest episodes of Bob Dylan’s career
Dylan in the '80s, part three.
In three songs on Empire Burlesque, Dylan plunges quite explicitly into the romantic, tragic territory of mainstream pre-rock songs.
This was an area that he would later explore in his music of the 2000s and 2010s.
But while later songs like Love and Theft, Moonlight, and By and By slightly subvert the genre, these songs are unashamedly sement- sentimental in tone and feature a number of rhymes which sound as corny and contrived as many of those old numbers.
Dylan seemed to be quite deliberately entering an arena which was the polar opposite of his established sense as a poetic songwriter.
It was hardly surprising that many of his fans were extremely bemused by this.
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