Greatest Hits Volume 3 (1994)
1. Tangled Up in Blue
2. Changing of the Guards
3. The Groom's Still Waiting at the Alter
4. Hurricane
5. Forever Young
6. Jokerman
7. Dignity
8. Silvio
9. Ring Them Bells
10.Gotta Serve Somebody
11.Series of Dreams
12.Brownsville Girl
13.Under the Red Sky
14.Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Greatest hits collections are rarely taken seriously by critics, let alone by the artists themselves. They tend to serve more as commercial placeholders than meaningful contributions to a discography. Yet, every so often, one emerges that does more than just gather familiar tracks—it curates a narrative. Greatest Hits Vol. 3, released in 1994, is one such entry. It doesn’t merely chronicle hits (in the chart sense), but distills a sprawling, often misunderstood era in Dylan’s career into a surprisingly coherent reflection.
Unlike the brisk succession of his first two volumes—Vol. 1 in 1967, followed swiftly by Vol. 2 in 1971—this third installment arrived after a significant hiatus. In the intervening 23 years, Dylan had moved through an array of incarnations: country recluse, born-again preacher, forgotten veteran, and then, gradually, spectral survivor. Commercial success had ebbed and flowed. Radio airplay had waned. Yet the output remained steady, and at times—particularly in the overlooked corners—extraordinary.
The compilation spans from 1973’s Watching the River Flow (technically from a prior hits set, but reestablished here) through the early '90s, including gems from Blood on the Tracks, Infidels, Oh Mercy, and even his gospel phase. Importantly, the tracklist avoids the expected pitfalls of redundancy and instead offers a curated cross-section, with no more than one track culled from each album. The result is a kaleidoscopic tour—disjointed on first listen, perhaps, but ultimately revelatory.
That the sequencing isn’t chronological is no accident. Dylan has always resisted linearity. The jump from the gospel urgency of Gotta Serve Somebody to the noir-inflected resignation of Series of Dreams may be jarring to the uninitiated, but therein lies the point. This isn’t a history lesson; it’s a portrait of contradiction. The record asks the listener to surrender expectations and engage with the work as a living, breathing organism, rather than a museum piece.
The inclusion of one previously unreleased track, Dignity, provides an anchor of sorts. Originally recorded during the Oh Mercy sessions, it had remained in the vaults—its eventual appearance here, reworked and recontextualized, is both a nod to Dylan’s editorial instincts and a reminder that some of his finest moments never saw the light of day until long after their creation. It is, fittingly, a song about fractured identity, elusive meaning, and the search for self in a chaotic world.
For the seasoned listener, Vol. 3 is less a revelation than a reminder of Dylan’s ability to reinvent without ever fully abandoning his roots. For the novice, it’s a demanding but rewarding introduction—an aural snapshot of an artist who refused to coast on past glories. It doesn’t offer the sing-along familiarity of Vol. 1, nor the countercultural mosaic of Vol. 2, but it captures something else: the endurance of voice, vision, and unrelenting curiosity.
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