Top 10 Bob Dylan Albums

On May 24, Bob Dylan will turn 70 years old. He has been a professional musician since 1960 and in that 50 year career; he’s released 32 studio albums, countless live albums and hits packages and a series of archive releases that just reached its ninth volume last year.
Here are ten of his most accessible and important studio albums:

1. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan - 1962
Dylan’s second album is like a sonic boom and if you’ve somehow managed to live a life without hearing it, you’ve spent that life in some fortified bunker close to the center of the earth. The songs on the record speak for themselves. “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” show off the protest side of Dylan, while love songs like “Girl From the North Country” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” prove his versatility.

2. Highway 61 Revisited - 1965
After his first four acoustic records, Dylan’s career can be broken up into trilogies – The Gospel Trilogy, The Mid-Eighties Trilogy, The 2000s Trilogy and, easily the best, The Electric Trilogy, made up of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Highway 61, though, is probably the best with “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Desolation Row,” “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” as stand-out tracks.

3. Blonde on Blonde - 1966
It almost defies description. The surrealistic trip that is the 74 minutes that make up Blonde on Blonde is certainly filled with some of the strangest and most bizarre lyrics of all time. The characters that populate these songs are all over the place, but Dylan’s singing and the fantastic musicians backing him make it a little easier to get through. Favorite tracks include “Visions of Johanna,” “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” and, of course, “Just Like a Woman.”

4. New Morning - 1970
New Morning came out immediately after the panned Self Portrait, but not as a response, since most of it was already recorded by the time that record was released. The songs on New Morning have a homely quality rarely found in Dylan’s work. This is a man just kicking back and enjoying life and it comes out on this short, fun record. “If Not for You,” “One More Weekend” and the title track make up the best of this vastly underrated album.

5. Blood on the Tracks - 1975
“Early one morning, the sun was shining and I was lying in bed/ Wonderin’ if she’d changed at all/ If her hair was still red.” That’s the opening lines to “Tangled Up in Blue,” which opens Blood on the Tracks. The album is probably Dylan’s most personal and you can just feel his marriage with Sara Lownds breaking apart at the seams. It’s certainly a work of art, one that holds up against the best works of literature and film that revolve around breaking-down relationships.

6. Desire - 1976
When people bring out the old cliché that Bob Dylan can’t sing, I just wonder if they’ve heard tracks like “Hurricane” or “Isis.” Sure, his near-screaming vocal style that he developed in the mid-‘70s probably scarred his voice forever (that and all the drugs), but the music he produced more than makes up for it. Desire does have some duds like “Mozambique” and the 11-minute aural massacre that is “Joey.” Yet, it is still enjoyable and easy to listen to because of the performances.

7. Oh Mercy - 1989
The ‘80s weren’t great for many artists, least of all Bob Dylan, who released a series of slight albums with few gems, reaching a low point with 1988’s Down in the Groove. However, in ’89, Dylan suddenly woke up and wrote Oh Mercy, an atmospheric album produced by Daniel Lanois. Dylan’s lyrics return to politics and romantic disillusionment. “Man in the Long Black Coat,” “Ring Them Bells,” and “Shooting Star” are the stand-outs.

8. World Gone Wrong - 1993
In the early ‘90s, Dylan released two cover albums, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong, both filled with folk standards. With these albums, Dylan re-invented himself again as an elder statesman of folk, bringing light to songs that were sometimes over a hundred years old. The second album is the better of the two, featuring some of the best guitar work of his career and some fine singing on tracks like “Blood in My Eyes,” “Delia” and “Ragged & Dirty.”

9. Time Out of Mind - 1997
Lanois returned to produce probably Dylan’s most introspective album with lyrics that touch on death, lost love and apocalypse. None of the songs here could fit on any other Dylan album. Still, it features some of his great late-masterpieces, like “Not Dark Yet,” “Cold Irons Bound” and “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven.” It also includes the oft-covered “Make You Feel My Love.”

10. “Love and Theft” - 2001
You can just feel the excitement and fun pouring out of this record, which was the first time Dylan utilized his entire "Never Ending Tour" band in the studio. It’s one of Dylan’s all-time masterpieces and the one album I need no excuse to listen to. On a personal note, vinyl is the best way to experience “Love and Theft,” and even though it’s pretty hard to find, it’s definitely worth it. “Mississippi,” “High Water (For Charley Patton)” and even “Lonesome Day Blues” can be put in the same sentence as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Tangled Up in Blue” as the best songs he has ever written. Since 2001, Dylan has released three studio albums, but none have reached the level of “Love and Theft.”