Interesting thoughts, thanks. Still think (even for Dylan) a 17 min opener would be a move, however bold, he'd be unlikely to take altho I appreciate the thematic link in terms of the book ending had he sequenced it that way and called the album MMF.
This is an album where I can now safely declare that I like every track. Muses and FP took a little while to get there but I'm on board with all 10.
Like all legacy artists, a strong debut and then a quick drop. This time, a 74% drop.... John Legend Sales Disaster on New CD “Bigger Love” with Just 13K CDs, Downloads, Bob Dylan Drops 74% 2nd Week
Only to be expected. Dylan is a legacy artist who only appeals to his long term fans. One critic said as much about his music last month and was unnecessarily shredded here in this thread. Open minds would know the sentiment was on target however frustrating that might be. This statistic just proves it; with all the high praise this album got, Dylan is still only saleable to Dylan fans. Once they've snapped up the physical copy in the first week there's no one left to sell it to.
I pretty much agree with this. I was on a zoom conference this past Friday where someone asked me if i had heard the new Dylan album. I said yes and that I loved it. There were ten people on the call with age ranges from about late 39s to early 60s. Only four people had heard Dylan had a new record out and only one had heard some of it but disliked his voice. There was little interest there. I was asked about it because they all know I’m a big record buyer still. They all stream. no not scientific but that’s where we are at in 2020.
Clive Davis discusses this very thing in his first book. He says Dylan fans and followers quickly buy a new release which propels it immediately onto the charts. And then it drops just as quickly.
There are about 150 people at my work place on my shift. I would be most suprised if any one of them had heard a Dylan song of the past 20 years.
I get that. But people can surprise you. Back in the mid-90s, I worked for a financial reporting company. We had a copy center which was staffed by young working-class guys (basically guys like me, but without a degree) and had a lot of turnover. Anyway, one day one of them knocked on my office door & said "I hear you're a Dylan man." Somewhat taken aback, I said "You heard correctly." He said "I think you'll like these," then handed me 2 cassettes of unreleased NET performances, some of which I had already, but most of which I didn't. (This was pre-Internet.) I reciprocated a day or two later with tape copies of the 4-CD Great Dane live set, You Don't Know Me, which I'd recently acquired. I think he was gone the following week, though.
Finally landed from Badlands UK. CD and Promo. Don't think I have enough wall space to hang this up on
Just bought this record (vinyl) from his site, got the digital download on heavy rotation. Seems kinda perfect for this bizarre time(s) we're all living through...
Sure, this is true to an extent, but I think it's also true that while only hardcore fans buy the CD or LP, everyone else (and virtually everyone under the age of 50 or 55) streams the songs. A quick check of YouTube shows that every song on Rough and Rowdy Ways is freely available on Bob's official channel, and every song has at least 200,000 or 300,000 hits over the past two to three weeks. "I Contain Multitudes" has 1.3 million listens. "False Prophet" has 1.1 million listens, while the official upload of "Murder Most Foul" has 4.1 million hits. Lots of comments from younger listeners. And those figures are just YouTube, I'm sure music streaming services like Spotify have millions more listens. Not too shabby for a 79-year old artist, in my opinion.
What is a non-legacy artist? One with short-term fans? Agreed though it is shocking that people who don't like Dylan don't like Dylan, and people who haven't heard of Dylan haven't heard of Dylan. I mean, how dare they? Tim
My daughter tells me these are amateur numbers. Some song of Adele's has over one billion listens. That's just incredible.
Yeah, no one's saying that Dylan's up there with Adele or Taylor Swift or Drake or, more recently, Dua Lipa. But still, those numbers are very respectable.
What? Until his next album? Wow, that's incredible. We wait 8 years for new original material and then two albums within a month. Bob's getting almost as prolific as Neil Young!
While this is basically true, I suspect Bob’s back catalog sells as steadily as any major artist’s catalog does, and, like every other album he’s ever put out, Rough and Rowdy Ways will sell steadily for decades to come.
Sorry if this has been covered, I haven't been following this thread recently as closely as I should be. Did we ever find out if there's an indie exclusive version in North America?? I see Bull Moose has a gold version (and unfortunately they still won't ship to Canada!!) but I wonder if that's just the Euro version they've imported.
So easy to get completely lost in this album. Like all Dylan's great records, it forms its own entirely self contained universe which feels bottomless.
Modern Times may have a smoother and more mannered vocal but for me RARW contains the most beautiful and expressive singing of all his 21st century original albums.
