Bob Dylan's least regarded albums

I didn't know Empire Burlesque was so poorly regarded!

Well, Kurt Loder gushed all over it when he wrote the original review for Rolling Stone. He's not really a good critic.

It isn't really. A few die-hards at the time. Christgau liked it, Holy Greil didn't, Rolling Stone was wishy-washy as usual. But I'm not the only person to defend it in the last 25 years.

and I've heard the alternate versions that birdistheword prefers, but I still wouldn't replace the originals.

Yeah, I was a kid when it came out, so Empire has a special association for me -- but I love the album version of "Tight Connection," and I think it's a solid LP all around.

if it helps, it wasn't included in this poll at all

but i agree, it's solid!

"Dark Eyes" and "Never Gonna Be the Same Again" are the duds.

When I saw Dylan in '05 (opener: Willie Nelson), he played "I'll Remember You."

i love "i'll remember you"

he's so good at writing that specific sort of song

"Dark Eyes" and "Never Gonna Be the Same Again" are the duds very good.

"Emotionally Yours" is blank like "To Make You Feel My Love" would be a decade later. It's as if he wrote them to prove he could write faceless ballads like the rest.

"Emotionally Yours" is such a terrible, meaningless phrase.

FWIW, here's Christgau's review. (B+'s are kind of a mixed grade coming from him.) And the Vietnam song he mentions is "Clean Cut Kid" - I'm pretty sure he's alone in his assessment on that one.

The absurd contention that by utilizing electronic horns and soul girls and big bam boom he's finally mastered pop fashion and state-of-the-craft production--I've actually heard this referred to as "Disco Dylan"--proves only that his diehard fans are even more alienated from current music than he is. At best he's achieved the professionalism he's always claimed as his goal. No longer "relevant" enough to make "statements" that mean shit to any discernible audience--vide Infidels or, on this record, "Trust Yourself" (only if you say so, Bob)--he's certainly talented enough to come up with a good bunch of songs. Hence, his best album since Blood on the Tracks. I wish that was a bigger compliment, but debunking comparisons to Street-Legal are also way off--the arrangements and especially the singing are, yes, tasteful enough to support material that puts Elton John to shame. I mean how did he get that ominous calm, that soupcon of prophecy? And how did he come up with the toughest Vietnam-vet song yet? B+

Song's tight.

Yeah I like that one. “He ate Burger Kings, he was well fed.”

that feels like a line from the new album

I've never listened to all of Empire

Tight Connection is good, production reminds me of "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits

The way he enunciates:

Never could learn to drink that blood
And call it wine,
Never could learn to hold you, love,
And call you mine.

is the essence of Dylan

Tight Connection is good, production reminds me of "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits

Ugh.

I mean you know that digital keyboard/gated snare heartland roots rock 80s vibe

As I said, ugh.

Far better song than "Walk of Life"

One would hope so!

I think "Emotionally Yours" is a good phrase, esp for him: alll the emotions babe...
On their album Emotionally Yours, O'Jays did two versions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx5L2mWFwOk&list=OLAK5uy_kLEZ4qMNT6HjZw9foHuDcalVocA6sTB94
(R&B version)

I......
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like Walk of Life

xpost Weird. Oh well, it's on youtube, with the gospel version. Not as good as The Persuasions' "The Man In Me," but Persuasions' voices were younger than EY-era O'Jays', and "The Man" is a better song, of course. Not bad for a faceless ballad tho (more vigorous than "To Feel My Love," although I certainly haven't heard every cover of that).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsx9YBV9EnM

From 1972----much later, they did a whole album of Dylan.

Their 1972 LP Street Corner Symphony (Lenny Kaye wrote a beautiful little piece somewhere about the brief-lived a capella persuasion, from late-50s to early 60s)

Bettye LaVette did "EY" on her incredible BD collection, Things Have Changed---here she is live, atypically ravaged, but driving through it, as always---"It's like...my whole life never happened...shake me, hold me..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJujOOFQV-c

Not so faceless there!

Wild to realize I’m the same age as Empire-era Dylan... I should get a suit like his.

Tight Connection has the tightest seven-inch art
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Bob_Dylan_Tight_Connection_to_My_Heart_Single.jpg

think i prefer the infidels version though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbhoo_gGkK8

Lou Reed gushed about Empire B in an interview

Wasn't it Down in the Groove? He liked "Rank Strangers to Me."

XP!...and Down In The Groove when talked to Rolling Stone in '89.

He oddly singled out two covers for praise, as if he thought Dylan wrote them.

It's the RS interview promoting New York, collected in a late nineties book of Reed interviews and essays.

Maybe. Reed talked about Dylan a lot in the 80s. It was something like "If a new artist had made (new Dylan album) it would be hailed as a masterpiece."

i think Dylan told Lou he loved "doin the things we want to" and suddenly Lou was a huge Dylan booster.

that's about right

Lou Reed said a lot over the years.

But he never said he was ept!

while they're beatin' the devil out of a guy
who's wearing a powder-blue weeeeeeeeeeeeeg

Best I recall, Reed did a good "Foot of Pride" on the Dylan trib 30th Anniversary Concert.

agree

Musically speaking, the 30th Anniversary Concert was a very uneven affair, but Reed's "Foot of Pride" was possibly the highlight of the whole thing. I think he was the only one to pick a song that was a 'bootleg' track. He's clearly reading off a teleprompter or something, so it could be better, but otherwise, he delivers it with a lot of authority. It has the makings of a great cover, it's just too bad he never tried it again in a recording studio.