Rough and Rowdy Ways

The 10 songs on Rough and Rowdy Ways were recorded in January and February 2020 at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles.[6] These sessions followed the fall 2019 leg of Dylan's Never Ending Tour during which he had introduced two new band members: drummer Matt Chamberlain (who replaced the outgoing George Receli) and guitarist Bob Britt (who had previously played on Dylan's Grammy Award-winning 1997 album Time Out of Mind).[7] Several critics described the shows on this tour as Dylan's best in years.[8][9][10]

The core Rough and Rowdy Ways band therefore consisted of the latest iteration of the Never Ending Tour band, which had just played together across the United States for a total of 39 shows.[11] In addition to Chamberlain and Britt, the group included Never Ending Tour band mainstays Tony Garnier on bass, Charlie Sexton on guitar, and multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron. The sessions also featured contributions from "additional musicians" Blake Mills, Fiona Apple, Benmont Tench, Alan Pasqua and Tommy Rhodes.[12]

Fiona Apple and Alan Pasqua both played piano on the nearly 17-minute "Murder Most Foul", the only track on which either musician appears, and recorded their parts in a single day. "I told Bob I was really insecure about it", Apple relayed in an interview with Pitchfork, "and he was really encouraging and nice. He was just like, 'You're not here to be perfect, you're here to be you'”.[13]

When asked in an interview how much "latitude" he had on what he played, guitarist Bob Britt responded, "You just play what fits the song. It is all guided by Bob, it may happen quickly or it may take a while to get it to where he likes it. It is really a beautiful process to watch how he crafts a song".[14]

Drummer Matt Chamberlain has similarly described the recording process as spontaneous: "(Dylan)'s so last-minute, in-the-moment about the way he makes his records. It's almost like playing with a poet jazz musician because he's just always changing it up; anything can happen at any time, things can just get trashed and we'll do a whole new version of a song. He's amazing".[15]

Blake Mills, who serves as a "sort of in-house producer"[16] at Sound City, is believed by many to have made a substantial impact on the overall sound of Rough and Rowdy Ways. Mills wrote on Instagram on the day of the album's release that working with Dylan was "the one thing I have always dreamt of doing, and it turned out to be better than the dream",[17] and posted videos of himself playing instrumental versions of seven of the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs solo on guitar. Dylanologist Trev Gibb concluded that "the album would have in no way been as musically elegant without his parts, if indeed these are the parts he played."[18]

The sessions were engineered and mixed by Chris Shaw who had previously engineered and mixed Dylan's albums Modern Times in 2006 and Love and Theft in 2001.[19]

On March 27, 2020, the single "Murder Most Foul" was released unannounced, Dylan's first original song distributed since 2012.[20][21][22] On April 17, 2020, "I Contain Multitudes", a second single, was released.[23][24][25][26]

Rough and Rowdy Ways was officially announced on May 8, 2020.[27] The album's third single, "False Prophet", was released on the same day.[28] On June 11, 2020, Bob Dylan's YouTube channel revealed the full tracklist only eight days before the album's release.[29] Rough and Rowdy Ways was released as a double album[30] on June 19, 2020, with the entirety of the second CD and the entirety of the last side of the vinyl edition dedicated to "Murder Most Foul".

Dylan only consented to one interview, with historian Douglas Brinkley, to promote the album. In a transcript of their wide-ranging chat, which appeared in The New York Times on June 12, 2020, Dylan discussed the composition of the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs (which he claims were written in a "trance state") and offered his thoughts on everything from the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of George Floyd to his favorite songs by The Rolling Stones and the Eagles.[31]

The album cover features a color-tinted version of a black-and-white photograph taken by British photojournalist Ian Berry in 1964. On assignment from the Observer, Berry was tasked with capturing images of "black culture in England" when he snapped a picture of a well-dressed couple dancing while a man leans on a jukebox behind them. The location is a "long-defunct underground club on Cable Street in the East London town of Whitechapel". Describing the album cover in Rolling Stone, music journalist Andy Greene wrote that "the image crackles with intrigue and romance".[32]

The inner sleeve of the album and the inside of the CD both feature a cropped, colorized version of the famous photograph of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family originally taken in Louisville, Kentucky on June 10, 1931.[33] The backs of both the vinyl album and CD covers feature a black-and-white photograph of John F. Kennedy that was originally used to promote the single of "Murder Most Foul" upon its release in March 2020.[34] The vinyl album sleeves contain additional images of the artwork used for the "I Contain Multitudes" and "False Prophet" singles that are not included in the CD artwork.[35][36]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	8.9/10[37]
Metacritic	95/100[38]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[39]
And It Don't Stop	A–[40]
BBC	[41]
The Daily Telegraph	[42]
The Guardian	[3]
The Independent	[43]
Mojo	[44]
NME	[45]
Pitchfork	9.0/10[2]
Rolling Stone	[46]

Rough and Rowdy Ways was met with widespread critical acclaim, and earned Dylan his highest ratings since Love and Theft (2001). At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 95 based on 25 reviews, making it the second highest-rated album of 2020 (behind only Fiona Apple's Fetch the Bolt Cutters).[47]

Reviewing for The Daily Telegraph in June 2020, Neil McCormick hailed the album as "one long, magnificent ride for his most loyal fans" and declared, "The wise old poet has stirred up a cryptic cauldron of truths and clues, philosophy, myths and magic."[42] Anne Margaret Daniel, reviewing for Hot Press, said "Rough and Rowdy Ways is a record we need right now, and it will endure."[48] Mikael Wood, in the Los Angeles Times, said the album "rolls out one marvel after another".[49] Writing for Slate, Carl Wilson called the release Dylan's best in "many years, maybe decades" for the breadth of its cultural references and the depth of Dylan's lyrics and songwriting.[50] Jon Pareles, chief music critic for The New York Times, labeled the album a "Critic's Pick," describing its songs as "equal parts death-haunted and cantankerous", rivaling "the grim, gallows-humored conviction of his albums Time Out of Mind (1997) and Love and Theft (2001)".[51] Sam Sodomsky, in a 9.0/10 review at Pitchfork, wrote that the vaudevillian spirit that ran through Love and Theft and Modern Times (2006) is mostly limited to the Frankenstein-themed "My Own Version of You" and that Dylan's "biting, absurdist humor is not the focus. There are no distractions; he speaks carefully, quietly, earnestly. It results in a gorgeous and meticulous record. The lyrics are striking—dense enough to inspire a curriculum, clever enough to quote like proverbs".[52] Exclaim!'s Kerry Doole gave the album a perfect rating of 10, praising its allusions to "old blues songs, Shakespeare, classical mythology ('Crossing the Rubicon'), the Bible and pop culture", drawing literary parallels between Dylan's work and that of authors Don DeLillo and James Ellroy, and asking "why intellectual references are so rare in contemporary music".[53] Writing for The Telegraph India, Jaimin Rajani said this release brings respite and diversity.[54] Ken Tucker of NPR's Fresh Air gave the release a positive review for its musical diversity.[55]

In his Substack-published "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau said that the album's impact is "muffled" by some "indistinct" songs, namely "Black Rider" and "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You", but declared, "The decisive musical achievement on Dylan's first album of originals since 2012 is establishing the aged voice that flubbed his Sinatra albums as the sonic signature of an elegiac retrospective".[40]

Although not released as a single, the penultimate track, the nine-and-a-half minute "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)", inspired substantial critical commentary. Rolling Stone ranked it the second best song of 2020[56] and placed it seventh on a list of "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century".[57] In an article accompanying the latter list, music journalist Rob Sheffield extrapolated from the impressionistic lyrics a narrative about "a grizzled outlaw, hiding out in Florida, hounded by his memories".[58] Authors Adam Selzer and Michael Glover Smith have drawn thematic parallels between "Key West" and Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg's "Over the Rainbow"[59] and Dylan's own "Murder Most Foul",[60] respectively. Historian Douglas Brinkley, who conducted the only interview with Dylan to coincide with the album's release, described the song as "a beautiful piece of art," adding that "Dylan knows it's my favorite on the CD".[61]

Rough and Rowdy Ways was the best-selling album in the United States the week it debuted (although it charted at No. 2 behind Lil Baby's My Turn due to streaming and individual track sales), with 53,000 equivalent album units. This made it Dylan's highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 in more than a decade and marked his seventh consecutive decade of charting top 40 albums, making him the only artist to date to accomplish this feat.[62]

The album also debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums and Americana/Folk Albums charts. On the latter list, Dylan extended his record as the all-time leader with eight No. 1 albums, dating to the chart's 2009 inception. Dylan also topped Billboard's Artist 100 chart on July 4, 2020 to become the top musical act in the U.S. for the first time, dating to the chart's launch in 2014. At 79-years-old, he is the "most-senior act" to ever top this chart.[63]

All tracks written by Bob Dylan.

• Rough and Rowdy Ways at Discogs (list of releases)
• Rough and Rowdy Ways at MusicBrainz (list of releases)