Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan

Blood on the Tracks came out on Columbia in 1975, bringing Bob Dylan back to the label after two albums on Asylum, and it's about as bare as he had ever let himself sound. He produced it himself. The sessions began at A & R studio in New York in September 1974, and the record looked finished. Then in December, with Columbia about to ship it, he abruptly changed course and cut much of it again at Sound 80 in Minneapolis. What came out was split right down the middle: five songs from New York, five from Minnesota.

This is folk rock worn down to the grain. "Tangled Up in Blue" tumbles forward like a story told on the run, never stopping to catch its breath; "Idiot Wind" snarls and spits; "Simple Twist of Fate", "Shelter From the Storm" and "You're a Big Girl Now" ache with regret; "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" rambles on like a long, sly yarn. People have tied the songs to trouble at home, and to his estrangement from his wife Sara; Jakob Dylan, one of their children, would later say the record sounded to him like his parents talking. Dylan has always insisted they weren't about him.

The first reviews were mixed. It didn't matter. It went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and No. 4 in the UK, "Tangled Up in Blue" reached No. 31 on the Hot 100, the album went double platinum in the US, and over the years it has climbed into the conversation about the greatest albums ever made. The Grammy Hall of Fame took it in 2015.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.