Bob Dylan is insulting you. This sarcastic, contemptuous rock song (and it definitely rocks, which is why so many folk purists booed when a newly electrified Dylan performed it with a full backing band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival) is a message to all of us. Dylan wants to know what it’s like to be hypocritical, washed up, pretentious “pretty people” who think we’ve “got it made.” Bruce Springsteen once described the first time he heard the song’s opening snare-drum beat as “kicking open the door to [my] mind.” Other people must have felt this way, too, because “Like a Rolling Stone” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 — a pretty impressive feat for a six-minute song (one of the longest ever played on the radio at that time) that feels just as messy and jumbled as the people being sung about. Rolling Stone magazine once called it the best song of all time. They might be a little biased, but we’re confident in saying it’s the best thing Bob Dylan has ever done.
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