Released: January 20, 1975<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n If heartbreak had a sound, it would be Bob Dylan’s voice cracking on side one of “Blood on the Tracks.” Following his separation from his wife Sara, Dylan created what might be history’s most eloquent version of the “It’s not you, it’s me\u2026 but actually it’s definitely you” conversation. Think of it as the singer-songwriter equivalent of drunk-texting your ex, if your drunk texts were somehow worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The album opens with “Tangled Up in Blue,” a masterpiece that somehow makes getting dumped sound like an epic adventure worthy of Homer. Dylan jumps through time like a quantum physicist with relationship issues, proving that even when you’re telling a story about love gone wrong, chronological order is optional. The song has more perspectives than a cubist painting, with Dylan switching from first to third person like he’s trying to convince himself it all happened to somebody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Simple Twist of Fate” follows, and there’s nothing simple about it except Dylan’s ability to rip your heart out in under five minutes. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to call everyone you’ve ever dated and apologize, even if you don’t know what for. The harmonica solo sounds like it’s being played by someone who just found out their dog died, and I mean that as the highest compliment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You’re a Big Girl Now” might be the most patronizing title since “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” but the song itself is a stunning admission of vulnerability. When Dylan sings “I can change, I swear,” you can almost hear every therapist in America collectively sighing. This is followed by “Idiot Wind,” which might be the most elaborate way anyone has ever said “Well, you’re stupid too!” after a breakup. It’s like a diss track written by Shakespeare\u2014brutal, poetic, and occasionally incomprehensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” is the sound of someone trying to be cool about an impending breakup and failing miserably. It’s like telling someone “I’m totally fine with this” while ugly-crying into your pillow. The country-tinged arrangement is so sweet it almost masks the fact that Dylan is basically saying “Thanks for the future trauma!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Meet Me in the Morning” proves that even Bob Dylan gets the blues, though his version involves more obscure literary references than most. It’s followed by “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” an epic tale that makes Game of Thrones seem straightforward by comparison. It’s either a complex metaphor for love and loss or Dylan just really wanted to write a cowboy story. Either way, it’s magnificent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If You See Her, Say Hello” is the sound of someone pretending to be over their ex while clearly not being over their ex. It’s like running into them at the grocery store and acting totally casual while secretly hoping they notice how well you’re doing (spoiler alert: Dylan was not doing well).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The album closes with “Buckets of Rain,” which feels like Dylan finally reaching the acceptance stage of grief, though in typical Dylan fashion, he gets there by way of surrealist imagery and references to chicken shacks. It’s either profound or nonsensical, and somehow it’s both at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2b50\u2b50\u2b50\u2b50\u2b50 (5\/5 stars)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Final Thoughts<\/strong>: “Blood on the Tracks” is the sound of a master songwriter turning personal pain into universal art. It’s like reading someone’s diary, if that someone happened to be the greatest lyricist of the 20th century. The album’s only flaw might be that it’s so good it makes your own breakup songs sound like nursery rhymes in comparison. Dylan doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve here\u2014he takes it out, examines it under a microscope, and then describes it in terms so poetic they make Leonard Cohen sound like a greeting card writer. It’s the kind of album that makes you grateful for great art while simultaneously making you hope you never go through what it took to create it. If you’re going through a breakup, this album is either the best or worst thing you could possibly listen to. Possibly both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dylan’s Beautiful Bummer of a Breakup Album Released: January 20, 1975 If heartbreak had a sound, it would be Bob Dylan’s voice cracking on side one of “Blood on the Tracks.” Following his separation from his wife Sara, Dylan created what might be history’s most eloquent version of the “It’s not you, it’s me\u2026 but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[88,212],"class_list":["post-1046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-dylan","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}