“Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" kicks open Bob Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, and it's the sound of the man plugging in and daring everybody to keep pace. Cut on January 14, 1965, with Tom Wilson producing and Paul Griffin on piano, it was among Dylan's first electric recordings: a rattling, hopped-up blues with words tumbling out faster than the ear can file them, and it handed him his first Top 40 single in America.

He'd run it down acoustic the day before, and that take eventually surfaced on The Bootleg Series. But the electric version is the one that stuck, helped along by the innovative clip first seen in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Dont Look Back. Rolling Stone later slotted it 187th among its 500 greatest songs.

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