Dylan (2007)


 
Disc One 1. Song to Woody 2. Blowin' in the Wind 3. Masters of War 4. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right 5. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall 6. The Times They Are A-Changin' 7. All I Really Want To Do 8. My Back Pages 9. It Ain't Me Babe 10.Subterranean Homesick Blues 11.Mr. Tambourine Man 12.Maggie's Farm 13.Like a Rolling Stone 14.It's All Over Now, Baby Blue 15.Positively 4th Street 16.Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35 17.Just Like a Woman 18.Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) 19.All Along the Watchtower Disc Two 1. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere 2. Lay Lady Lay 3. If Not For You 4. I Shall Be Released 5. Knockin' on Heaven's Door 6. On a Night Like This 7. Forever Young 8. Tangled Up in Blue 9. Simple Twist of Fate 10.Hurricane 11.Changing of the Guards 12.Gotta Serve Somebody 13.Precious Angel 14.The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar 15.Jokerman 16.Dark Eyes Disc Three 1. Blind Willie McTell 2. Brownsville Girl 3. Silvio 4. Ring Them Bells 5. Dignity 6. Everything is Broken 7. Under the Red Sky 8. You're Gonna Quit Me 9. Blood in My Eyes 10.Not Dark Yet 11.Things Have Changed 12.Make You Feel My Love 13.High Water (for Charley Patton) 14.Po' Boy 15.Someday Baby 16.When the Deal Goes Down

 

Retrospective anthologies tend to be exercises in either excess or omission—too many tracks for the casual listener, too few for the seasoned devotee. Dylan (2007), a three-disc, career-spanning compilation, finds an admirable middle ground. It doesn’t attempt to be definitive—an impossible task across four decades of output—but it does achieve something rarer: coherence.

Laid out chronologically, the set moves from the early acoustic years through the electric revolution, gospel excursions, late-career renaissance, and into the quieter triumphs of Dylan’s twenty-first-century work. The sequencing allows the listener to chart the development of not just a songwriter, but of a voice—shifting, hardening, renewing—across time.

Predictably, most of the canonical works are present. But the true strength of this collection lies in its commitment to Dylan’s less celebrated periods. Tracks from albums like Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times—critically admired though often commercially overlooked—are granted space alongside the anthems of the 1960s and 1970s. The effect is to remind the listener that Dylan never stopped evolving, nor did he ever truly retreat into irrelevance.

Of course, no compilation will please everyone. One listener’s essential track is another’s expendable B-side, and inevitably, some personal favorites will be absent. But what is here feels deliberate, even generous. There are no glaring missteps, and almost nothing that could be considered filler. It is a rare “best of” that genuinely plays like an album in its own right, rather than a marketing exercise.

If there is a fault, it’s the inherent limitation of the format. Dylan’s art was never built for easy summation. Still, Dylan (2007) serves as both an accessible entry point and a rewarding refresher—an anthology that manages to reflect not just the highlights, but the arc of a singular musical life.

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