The Best Bob Dylan album (poll closes 5. May)

i kinda like how 'bringing it all back home' snuck into second spot. overall, i probably find that one the most enjoyable to listen to.

though i still seem to recognise blonde on blonde as the best

I went back and listened to Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited not too long ago, and was surprised to find that I prefered Highway, which is not how I voted on this poll. I think Blonde still has the better band sound and singing voice - but that Highway has the better songs and is more consistent.

We need to do a bootleg list. Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte would win the entire thing and everyone would get it and realize how good it is.

This may be common knowledge, but I just read in the Guardian that Dylan is recording an album of Christmas songs:

Forty-four years after he went electric, folk's elder statesman may shock fans in an entirely different way with a collection of traditional Christmas carols and original seasonal compositions, due later this year. Dylan has been working on the record at Jackson Browne's Master Studios in Santa Monica, California. At least four songs have been recorded so far: Must Be Santa, Here Comes Santa Claus, I'll Be Home for Christmas and O Little Town of Bethlehem.

The latter song may spark fresh speculation about Dylan's religious leanings. But, as Billboard points out, there is a tradition of Jewish musicians – including Neil Diamond, Phil Spector and Irving Berlin – recording festive albums. In the late 70s, Dylan became a born-again Christian, recording the gospel-influenced Slow Train Coming.

Dylan biographer, Scott Marshall, told Bullypulpit.com: "A Christmas album by Bob Dylan in the pipeline doesn't really shock me. At first glance it may sound bizarre, but I don't think Dylan really cares what his detractors might make of it. Dylan still sings songs from Slow Train Coming to this day and he's both never renounced being Jewish or renounced his experience with Jesus some three decades ago. He remains enigmatic and this will probably be talked about for years to come."

I have a version of "This old man (nick nack paddy wack)"

I hadn't heard about this. It sounds great! Any news on what band he's recording this with?

some talk here:

It's A Very BOB Christmas?!?

freewheelin
the times they are a changing
highway 61
bringing it all back home
blonde on blonde
desire
blood on the tracks
street legal
pat garrett & billy the kid
john wesley harding
love and theft
oh mercy
time out of mind
another side of bob dylan
bob dylan
nashville skyline
modern times
slow train coming
knocked out loaded
self portrait
new morning
infidels
empire burlesque
planet waves
shot of love

i just wanted to do that

drinking beer and listening to boots of spanish leather

freewheelin is my all time for personal reasons really, though i do think it's underrated, but if anyone, like me, maybe brushed off the times they are a changing as a minor early album, id say hey go back to it. it's killing me lately. it has the spareness of a JWH but it's not a return or a distilled vision laying around in the outsized space cleared by the crazy-poetry/dylan-is-a-genius albums, it's just raw and lonely and concrete, and there's not a darker, spookier song i can think of from a major name still on their upswing than ballad of hollis brown, and 1 more cup of coffee and boots of spanish leather, which is like girl from the north country with the tables turned, are at least as affecting as anything else he did. then its got some of his best political stuff, hattie carol "who emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level" and only a pawn in their game (and with god on our side), and the now seemingly perfunctory but actually kinda timeless and still not annoying title track. and restless farewell sounds as though he thought he'd never write another song. also i love the quality of his voice on these albums.

Freewheelin' is great -- it's definitely my fave of the early acoustic records. It's also crying out for an expanded edition -- there are so many great outtakes from those sessions. The Freewheelin' Sessions bootleg covers a lot of it, but it deserves official release. Actually, the same goes for Times ...

I have a hard time with Times because I can't stand the hectoring tone of his singing voice on that album. It's the one voice of his where I can understand the haters who say he can't sing. He's toned it back already by the 1964 Halloween show and Another Side, and it's gone by 1965.

finally got around to listening to the 1962 debut, not at all what I was expecting tbh. He really over-emotes vocally in an awkward way, was kind of expecting more reverent/restrained versions of the material