No Bob Dylan song encapsulates the itinerant Dylan like “Tangled Up in Blue.” He often said it took him 10 years to live and two to write. “Tangled Up in Blue” kicks off Blood on the Tracks, Dylan’s 1975 album that refocused his songwriting chops following a divorce. He once remarked that he’d been listening to Joni Mitchell’s album Blue for an entire weekend when he wrote the song, and it includes some of his most vivid imagery — hearing revolution in the air and seeing words glow like burning coal. It’s a tune that doesn’t seem to have a center. Lyrically, it just plows forward and doesn’t look back, like a cross-country hitchhiker. Much of it is a story with intersecting characters seemingly disconnected from time. But the most important character is Dylan himself, a man still on the road, on his way to some other joint.
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