Desire (1976)

Introductory remarks

Eyolf Østrem

In a blog post, Oisin O’Faghain suggested I write the following about Desire:

I think Dylan’s best singing is on Desire and Rolling Thunder (the latter being the superior).

Desire stories (yes i just used “story” as a verb) the crap out of other story albums and yet its ’stories” contain questionable biographies ’Joey”, ’Sara”, ’Hurricane”.

It is (chord-speaking) probably his most straightforward album with major and minor chords, no capo and all standard tuning. A departure, but also lyrically it is a stand-alone album (probably closest to John Wesley Harding) because its lyrics are not complex but yet remain opaque: ’Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore”.

So I did. I think I have a thing or two to say about Desire myself, eventually, but until I do, the above stands, with the possible qualification that it should start: “While I listen to Desire, I tend to forget that Dylan’s best singing happened a few years later, during the Gospel period.”