Modern Times (Bob Dylan album)
Encyclopedia
Modern Times is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan
's 32nd studio album
, released by Columbia Records in August 2006. The album was Dylan's third straight (following Time Out of Mind
and Love and Theft) to be met with nearly universal praise from fans and critics. It continued its predecessors' tendencies toward blues
, rockabilly
and pre-rock ballad
ry, and was self-produced by Dylan under the pseudonym "Jack Frost". Along with the acclaim, the album sparked some debate over its uncredited use of choruses and arrangements from older songs, as well as many lyrical lines taken from the work of 19th century poet Henry Timrod
.
Modern Times became the singer-songwriter's first #1 album in the U.S. since 1976's Desire. It was also his first album to debut at the summit of the Billboard 200
, selling 191,933 copies in its first week. At age 65, Dylan became the oldest living person at the time to have an album enter the Billboard charts at number one. It also reached #1 in Canada
, Australia
, New Zealand
, Ireland
, Denmark
, Norway
and Switzerland
, debuted #2 in Germany
, Austria
and Sweden
. It reached #3 in the UK and The Netherlands, respectively, and had sold over 4 million copies worldwide in its first two months of release. As with its two studio predecessors, the album's packaging features minimal credits and no lyric sheet.
, drummer George G Receli, guitarists Stu Kimball and Denny Freeman
, plus multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron. Dylan produced the album under the name "Jack Frost".
Early rehearsals were held in late January and early February 2006 at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie
, New York. Days after the rehearsals, recording sessions were held at Clinton Studios in Manhattan
where the album was recorded digitally in roughly three weeks.
While it had been marketed as the third in a conceptual trilogy, beginning in 1997 with Time Out of Mind
, Dylan himself rebuffed the notion. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he stated that he "would think more of "Love and Theft" as the beginning of a trilogy, if there's going to be a trilogy."
and "Love and Theft", helped to make Modern Times a highly anticipated release. As with Theft in 2001, Sony held a listening event for critics far in advance, but those invited were forbidden from disclosing details or opinions about what they heard prior to the official release.
Modern Times was leaked online
through various BitTorrent and Dylan fan websites on August 21, 2006, after 30-second sound clips were released on the official Sony
website. The album was first released in some European countries (including Germany and Ireland) on August 25, in the UK on August 28 and premiered in the U.S. on August 28 on XM Satellite Radio
, the satellite radio service that carried Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour
program.
ran an article exploring similarities between some of the lyrics in Modern Times and the work of 19th century poet Henry Timrod
. Albuquerque disc jockey
Scott Warmuth is credited as the first to discover at least ten substantial lines and phrases that can be clearly traced to the Civil War
poet across several songs. Dylan and Sony have declined to comment on the matter, and Timrod's name is nowhere to be found on the liner notes. Robert Polito of the Poetry Foundation wrote a detailed defense of Dylan's usage of old lines in creating new work, saying that calls of plagiarism
confuse "art with a term paper".
In October 2006, The Nelson Mail
ran an article by New Zealand poet Cliff Fell exploring similarities between some of the lyrics in Modern Times and the works of the first-century Roman poet Ovid
. Fell cited numerous direct parallels between lines from Ovid and those in four of Dylan's songs. A sampling of these included:
Fell considered the borrowings an homage and not plagiarism, noting Dylan's direct reference to Ovid in the album's first song, "Thunder on the Mountain", with the line "I've been sitting down and studying The Art of Love." The Art of Love
was one of the great poet's most famous works.
online feature, Dylan mentioned that he was working on a song based on a Bing Crosby melody, now known to be "When The Deal Goes Down". Meanwhile, Dylan has a history of being open about his songwriting techniques, and his usage of older classics. For instance, in a 2004 interview with Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times
, he stated,
The lack of official credits is not a legal problem, given the age of the songs, but it troubled journalist Jim Fusilli of the Wall Street Journal. Fusilli thought that this was contrary to Dylan's long track record of noting his influences, as in the liner notes of 1993's World Gone Wrong
. Joe Levy of Rolling Stone
claimed to have raised the question with Sony BMG executives, who shrugged it off as a non-issue.
Levy and many others have supported Dylan in the context of a larger, older blues and folk tradition of songwriters evolving old songs into new ones, which Dylan was no stranger to in the 1960s. Pete Seeger
himself has previously expressed the view that Dylan is a link in this chain of folk and blues songwriters. Seeger has spoken many times about the folk process, often recounting that his friend Woody Guthrie
once said to him "That guy stole that from me, but I steal from everybody". Ramblin' Jack at one time expressed similar sentiments: "Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn't teach me. He just said, 'If you want to learn something, just steal it - that's the way I learned from Lead Belly'".
The response from critics was overwhelmingly positive. The publications Rolling Stone
and UNCUT
both crowned Modern Times with five-out-of-five stars. Rolling Stone critic Joe Levy called the album Dylan's "third straight masterwork". Robert Christgau
of Blender
described it as "startling [and radiating] the observant calm of old masters who have seen enough life to be ready for anything—Yeats
, Matisse, Sonny Rollins
". Jody Rosen of the online magazine Slate
concurred, calling Modern Times "a better album than Time Out of Mind and even than the majestic Love and Theft, which by my lights makes it Dylan's finest since Blood on the Tracks". The album was also credited for original blues and folk rock music which was said to be, "hard to hear these days" by critics.
Alexis Petridis
in The Guardian
ridiculed the lavish praise heaped on the album and wrote: "It's hard to hear the music of Modern Times over the inevitable standing ovation and the thuds of middle-aged critics swooning in awe." While enjoying the record, Petridis said Modern Times was "not one of those infrequent, unequivocally fantastic Dylan albums". Jim DeRogatis of The Chicago Sun-Times appreciated the lyrical content but found fault in the languid music, writing that "with the exception of the closing track 'Ain't Talkin', one of the spookiest songs he's ever written, Dylan disappoints with...[his] inexplicable fondness for smarmy '30s and '40s ballad
ry".
Perhaps the sourest review came from Ron Rosenbaum
. Writing in the New York Observer
, Rosenbaum called Modern Times, “a wildly overhyped disappointment... The new album is possibly the worst since Self Portrait
, with songs that rarely rise above the level of Dylan’s low point - and everybody seems afraid to say so."
Some reviewers who liked the album were critical of its musicianship, such as The Chicago Tribunes Greg Kot, and Jon Pareles
of The New York Times
, who wrote that "onstage Mr. Dylan’s touring band regularly supercharges his songs. But on Modern Times the musicians play as if they’re just feeling their way into the tunes."
According to Metacritic
, a site that tracks prominent critical opinion, Modern Times approval rating hovers around 89%, indicating wide acclaim and earning it the honor of 30th most-liked-by-critics album (on Metacritic) of all time.
The album became Dylan's third successive album to top the Village Voice's 'Pazz & Jop
' poll. "Love and Theft" and Time Out of Mind
won in 2001 and 1997 respectively. The album was also placed at #1 on Rolling Stone
Magazines list of the 50 greatest albums of 2006 http://stereogum.com/4165/rolling_stones_best_albums_of_06/list/ and #8 on the same magazines 100 greatest albums of the 2000s list http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-best-albums-of-the-2000s-20110718/bob-dylan-modern-times-19691231.
's 1947 photograph Taxi, New York at Night. The image was previously used as a cover by the defunct band Luna
for their 1995 single "Hedgehog/23 Minutes in Brussels".
The album was released in both standard and special edition formats, with the special edition including a bonus DVD of four Dylan music videos. The DVD contains "Blood In My Eyes" (Promo Video), "Love Sick" (Live at the Grammys 1997), "Things Have Changed" (Promo Video) and "Cold Irons Bound" (Masked and Anonymous Video). Because of the length of the songs, the entire album stretched out to two LPs.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's 32nd studio album
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
, released by Columbia Records in August 2006. The album was Dylan's third straight (following Time Out of Mind
Time out of Mind
Time Out of Mind is the 30th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 30, 1997 on Columbia Records. It is his first double studio album since 1970's Self Portrait...
and Love and Theft) to be met with nearly universal praise from fans and critics. It continued its predecessors' tendencies toward blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, rockabilly
Rockabilly
Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, dating to the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...
and pre-rock ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
ry, and was self-produced by Dylan under the pseudonym "Jack Frost". Along with the acclaim, the album sparked some debate over its uncredited use of choruses and arrangements from older songs, as well as many lyrical lines taken from the work of 19th century poet Henry Timrod
Henry Timrod
Henry Timrod was an American poet, often called the poet laureate of the Confederacy.-Biography:Timrod was born on December 8, 1828, in Charleston, South Carolina, to a family of German descent. His grandfather Heinrich Dimroth emigrated to the United States in 1765 and Anglicized his name...
.
Modern Times became the singer-songwriter's first #1 album in the U.S. since 1976's Desire. It was also his first album to debut at the summit of the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
, selling 191,933 copies in its first week. At age 65, Dylan became the oldest living person at the time to have an album enter the Billboard charts at number one. It also reached #1 in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, debuted #2 in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. It reached #3 in the UK and The Netherlands, respectively, and had sold over 4 million copies worldwide in its first two months of release. As with its two studio predecessors, the album's packaging features minimal credits and no lyric sheet.
Band and production
The album was recorded with Dylan's current touring band, including bassist Tony GarnierTony Garnier (musician)
Tony Garnier is an American bassist , best known as an accompanist to Bob Dylan, with whom he has played since 1989...
, drummer George G Receli, guitarists Stu Kimball and Denny Freeman
Denny Freeman
Denny Freeman is an American Texas and electric blues guitarist. Although he is primarily known as a guitar player, Freeman has also played piano and electric organ, both in concert and on various recordings...
, plus multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron. Dylan produced the album under the name "Jack Frost".
Early rehearsals were held in late January and early February 2006 at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie
Poughkeepsie (city), New York
Poughkeepsie is a city in the state of New York, United States, which serves as the county seat of Dutchess County. Poughkeepsie is located in the Hudson River Valley midway between New York City and Albany...
, New York. Days after the rehearsals, recording sessions were held at Clinton Studios in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
where the album was recorded digitally in roughly three weeks.
While it had been marketed as the third in a conceptual trilogy, beginning in 1997 with Time Out of Mind
Time out of Mind
Time Out of Mind is the 30th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 30, 1997 on Columbia Records. It is his first double studio album since 1970's Self Portrait...
, Dylan himself rebuffed the notion. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he stated that he "would think more of "Love and Theft" as the beginning of a trilogy, if there's going to be a trilogy."
Anticipation
Dylan's historical stature, as well as his renewed critical acclaim following Time Out of MindTime out of Mind
Time Out of Mind is the 30th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 30, 1997 on Columbia Records. It is his first double studio album since 1970's Self Portrait...
and "Love and Theft", helped to make Modern Times a highly anticipated release. As with Theft in 2001, Sony held a listening event for critics far in advance, but those invited were forbidden from disclosing details or opinions about what they heard prior to the official release.
Modern Times was leaked online
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
through various BitTorrent and Dylan fan websites on August 21, 2006, after 30-second sound clips were released on the official Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
website. The album was first released in some European countries (including Germany and Ireland) on August 25, in the UK on August 28 and premiered in the U.S. on August 28 on XM Satellite Radio
XM Satellite Radio
XM Satellite Radio is one of two satellite radio services in the United States and Canada, operated by Sirius XM Radio. It provides pay-for-service radio, analogous to cable television. Its service includes 73 different music channels, 39 news, sports, talk and entertainment channels, 21 regional...
, the satellite radio service that carried Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour
Theme Time Radio Hour
Theme Time Radio Hour was a weekly, one-hour satellite radio show hosted by Bob Dylan originally airing from May 2006 to April 2009...
program.
Credit controversy
Shortly after its release, the album sparked some debate in the media concerning its songwriting credits, mainly the liner notes' contention of "All songs written by Bob Dylan", which appears in most editions of Modern Times.Adaptations
Many of the album's songs have roots in well-known older compositions, though in all cases, Dylan has given the songs new lyrics.- "Thunder on the Mountain" has a second verse based on the song "Ma Rainey" by Memphis MinnieMemphis MinnieMemphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...
. Dylan cuts and shuffles Memphis MinnieMemphis MinnieMemphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...
's lyrics substituting Alicia KeysAlicia KeysAlicia Augello Cook , better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began playing the piano...
and Hell's KitchenHell's Kitchen, ManhattanHell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City between 34th Street and 59th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River....
for Ma RaineyMa RaineyMa Rainey was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues....
and her GeorgiaGeorgia (U.S. state)Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
birthplace. The reference to Keys was listed by Rolling StoneRolling StoneRolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
as among the "ten weirdest shoutouts" in song. The guitar licks and riffs are typical of Chuck BerryChuck BerryCharles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
's famous records, with the melody sounding closest to "Let It RockLet It Rock (Chuck Berry song)"Let It Rock" is a song by Chuck Berry from his 1960 album Rockin' at the Hops. The same year, it was released as the B-side of the single "Too Pooped to Pop " and reached #64 in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #6 in the UK. The song is about working on a train track as a train is...
."
- "Rollin' and Tumblin'" is a blues standard first recorded and possibly written by the bluesman Hambone Willie NewbernHambone Willie NewbernHambone Willie Newbern was an American guitar-playing country blues musician. His home community was in the Brownsville, Tennessee area along Tennessee State Route 19. He was reported to have played with Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes in the 1920s and 1930s...
. An arrangement very similar to Dylan's but with different lyrics was a hit for Muddy Waters, who is also credited with writing the song. Except for the first verse, all the lyrics in Dylan's version are original.
- "When the Deal Goes Down" is based on the melody of "Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)"Where the Blue of the Night " was the theme Bing Crosby selected for his radio show. It was recorded in November 1931, backed by Bennie Krueger's band. The song was featured in a Mack Sennett movie short starring Bing Crosby....
", a signature-song for Bing CrosbyBing CrosbyHarry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
.
- "Someday Baby" is based on an old standard that can be traced back to "Worried Life Blues", recorded by Sleepy John EstesSleepy John EstesJohn Adam Estes , best known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, was a American blues guitarist, songwriter and vocalist, born in Ripley, Lauderdale County, Tennessee.-Career:...
, and made famous in versions by Lightnin' HopkinsLightnin' HopkinsSam John Hopkins better known as Lightnin’ Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas...
and Muddy WatersMuddy WatersMcKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
. It is sometimes referred to as "Trouble No More", and often credited to Muddy Waters.
- The chorus of "Working Man's Blues" features the line, "Meet me at the bottom, don't lag behind, bring me my boots and shoes." The unusual phrasing appears to have been borrowed from cool jazzCool jazzCool is a style of modern jazz music that arose following the Second World War. It is characterized by its relaxed tempos and lighter tone, in contrast to the bebop style that preceded it...
singer June ChristyJune ChristyJune Christy , born Shirley Luster, was an American singer, known for her work in the cool jazz genre and for her silky smooth vocals. Her success as a singer began with The Stan Kenton Orchestra. She pursued a solo career from 1954 and is best known for her debut album Something Cool...
's 1946 song "June's Blues", which contains the words, "Meet me in the bottom, bring me my boots and shoes". Dylan has showed an affinity for Christy's music, and played a number of her songs throughout the course of his Theme Time Radio Hour XM program. The line also appears as "Meet me in the bottom, bring me my running shoes", in the Willie DixonWillie DixonWilliam James "Willie" Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the Upright bass and the guitar, as well as his own singing voice, Dixon is arguably best known as one of the most prolific songwriters...
song "Down in the Bottom" (it itself an adaptation of "Rollin' and Tumblin'"), recorded by Howlin' WolfHowlin' WolfChester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
. A similar variant appears in Big Joe WilliamsBig Joe WilliamsJoseph Lee Williams , billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar...
's song "Meet Me Around the Corner" ("Meet me around the corner, bring me my boots and shoes").
- "Beyond the Horizon" is based around the song "Red Sails in the SunsetRed Sails in the Sunset (song)"Red Sails in the Sunset" is a popular song.Published in 1935, its music was written by Hugh Williams with lyrics by prolific songwriter Jimmy Kennedy...
," written by Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams in 1935 using its melody and basic structure.
- "Nettie Moore" takes its title, and some of its chorus, from an 1857 composition "Gentle Nettie Moore" by Marshall Pike and James Lord Pierpont, the composer of "Jingle Bells", though Dylan's melody and lyrics are otherwise unrecognizable, although the song shares a rhyme with "MoonshinerThe MoonshinerThe Moonshiner is a folk song with disputed origins. It is believed that the song originated in America, then later was made famous in Ireland. Others believe that it was the other way around. The Clancy Brothers stated on their recording that the song is of Irish origin, but again, this is...
", a traditional folk song that Dylan recorded in 1963: "They say whiskey will kill ya, but I don't think it will" vs. "If whiskey don't kill me, I don't know what will."
- "The Levee's Gonna Break" is based on "When the Levee BreaksWhen the Levee Breaks"When the Levee Breaks" is a blues song written and first recorded by husband and wife Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929. The song is in reaction to the upheaval caused by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927....
" by Kansas Joe McCoyKansas Joe McCoyKansas Joe McCoy was an African American Delta blues musician and songwriter.-Career:McCoy played music under a variety of stage names but is best known as "Kansas Joe McCoy". Born in Raymond, Mississippi, he was the older brother of the blues accompanist Papa Charlie McCoy...
and Memphis MinnieMemphis MinnieMemphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...
. It has been previously adapted by rock acts such as Led ZeppelinLed ZeppelinLed Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
. The song has also been in the public domain since 2004.
- "Ain't Talkin'" derives its chorus from the more up-tempo "Highway of Regret" by The Stanley BrothersThe Stanley BrothersThe Stanley Brothers were an American bluegrass duo made up of brothers Carter and Ralph Stanley.-Biography:Carter and Ralph Stanley hailed originally from Dickenson County, Virginia. The family soon moved to McClure, Virginia where their parents worked a small farm in the Clinch Mountains...
. The lyrics of the first verse seem to be derived from the first verse of "As I Roved Out", a traditional Irish song.
Additional sources
Two other sources of the album's lyrics were cited in the latter half of 2006. In September, The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
ran an article exploring similarities between some of the lyrics in Modern Times and the work of 19th century poet Henry Timrod
Henry Timrod
Henry Timrod was an American poet, often called the poet laureate of the Confederacy.-Biography:Timrod was born on December 8, 1828, in Charleston, South Carolina, to a family of German descent. His grandfather Heinrich Dimroth emigrated to the United States in 1765 and Anglicized his name...
. Albuquerque disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
Scott Warmuth is credited as the first to discover at least ten substantial lines and phrases that can be clearly traced to the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
poet across several songs. Dylan and Sony have declined to comment on the matter, and Timrod's name is nowhere to be found on the liner notes. Robert Polito of the Poetry Foundation wrote a detailed defense of Dylan's usage of old lines in creating new work, saying that calls of plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
confuse "art with a term paper".
In October 2006, The Nelson Mail
The Nelson Mail
The Nelson Mail is a daily newspaper in New Zealand. Founded in 1866 and then known as The Nelson Evening Mail. It absorbed another local paper, The Colonist about 1906.The paper is currently owned by Fairfax New Zealand....
ran an article by New Zealand poet Cliff Fell exploring similarities between some of the lyrics in Modern Times and the works of the first-century Roman poet Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
. Fell cited numerous direct parallels between lines from Ovid and those in four of Dylan's songs. A sampling of these included:
| Song | Concerned line | Possible Source Text |
|---|---|---|
| "Workingman's Blues #2" | no one can claim that I ever took up arms against you. | No one can ever claim/ That I took up arms against you. Ovid (Tristia, Book 2, Lines 51-53) |
| "Ain't Talkin'" | every nook and corner had its tears. | Every nook and cranny has its tears. Ovid (Tristia, Book 1, Section 3, Line 24) |
| "The Levee's Gonna Break" | Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones. | there's barely enough skin to cover my bones. Ovid (Tristia, Book 4, Section 7, Line 51) |
| "Spirit on the Water" | I cannot believe these things could fade from your mind. | Can’t believe these things would ever fade from your mind. Ovid (Black Sea Letters, Book 2, Section 4, Line 24) |
Fell considered the borrowings an homage and not plagiarism, noting Dylan's direct reference to Ovid in the album's first song, "Thunder on the Mountain", with the line "I've been sitting down and studying The Art of Love." The Art of Love
Ars Amatoria
The Ars amatoria is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Background:After...
was one of the great poet's most famous works.
Dylan's response to credit controversy
None of these previous incarnations or their authors are credited, though Dylan has casually acknowledged some of the uses. In a 2006 NewsweekNewsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
online feature, Dylan mentioned that he was working on a song based on a Bing Crosby melody, now known to be "When The Deal Goes Down". Meanwhile, Dylan has a history of being open about his songwriting techniques, and his usage of older classics. For instance, in a 2004 interview with Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, he stated,
The lack of official credits is not a legal problem, given the age of the songs, but it troubled journalist Jim Fusilli of the Wall Street Journal. Fusilli thought that this was contrary to Dylan's long track record of noting his influences, as in the liner notes of 1993's World Gone Wrong
World Gone Wrong
World Gone Wrong is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's 29th studio album, released by Columbia Records in October 1993.It was Dylan's second consecutive collection of only traditional folk songs, performed acoustically with guitar and harmonica...
. Joe Levy of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
claimed to have raised the question with Sony BMG executives, who shrugged it off as a non-issue.
Levy and many others have supported Dylan in the context of a larger, older blues and folk tradition of songwriters evolving old songs into new ones, which Dylan was no stranger to in the 1960s. Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
himself has previously expressed the view that Dylan is a link in this chain of folk and blues songwriters. Seeger has spoken many times about the folk process, often recounting that his friend Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
once said to him "That guy stole that from me, but I steal from everybody". Ramblin' Jack at one time expressed similar sentiments: "Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn't teach me. He just said, 'If you want to learn something, just steal it - that's the way I learned from Lead Belly'".
Critical reaction
The response from critics was overwhelmingly positive. The publications Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
and UNCUT
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
both crowned Modern Times with five-out-of-five stars. Rolling Stone critic Joe Levy called the album Dylan's "third straight masterwork". Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
of Blender
Blender (magazine)
Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....
described it as "startling [and radiating] the observant calm of old masters who have seen enough life to be ready for anything—Yeats
Yeats
W. B. Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright.Yeats may also refer to:* Yeats ,* Yeats , an impact crater on Mercury* Yeats , an Irish thoroughbred racehorse-See also:...
, Matisse, Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins
Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...
". Jody Rosen of the online magazine Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
concurred, calling Modern Times "a better album than Time Out of Mind and even than the majestic Love and Theft, which by my lights makes it Dylan's finest since Blood on the Tracks". The album was also credited for original blues and folk rock music which was said to be, "hard to hear these days" by critics.
Alexis Petridis
Alexis Petridis
Alexis Petridis is a British journalist, head rock and pop critic for UK newspaper The Guardian, as well as a regular and contributor to the magazine GQ.Petridis began his career writing for Varsity whilst a student at the University of Cambridge...
in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
ridiculed the lavish praise heaped on the album and wrote: "It's hard to hear the music of Modern Times over the inevitable standing ovation and the thuds of middle-aged critics swooning in awe." While enjoying the record, Petridis said Modern Times was "not one of those infrequent, unequivocally fantastic Dylan albums". Jim DeRogatis of The Chicago Sun-Times appreciated the lyrical content but found fault in the languid music, writing that "with the exception of the closing track 'Ain't Talkin', one of the spookiest songs he's ever written, Dylan disappoints with...[his] inexplicable fondness for smarmy '30s and '40s ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
ry".
Perhaps the sourest review came from Ron Rosenbaum
Ron Rosenbaum
-Life and career:Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated from Yale University in 1968 and won a Carnegie Fellowship to attend Yale's graduate program in English Literature, though he dropped out after taking one course...
. Writing in the New York Observer
New York Observer
The New York Observer is a weekly newspaper first published in New York City on September 22, 1987, by Arthur L. Carter, a very successful former investment banker with publishing interests. The Observer focuses on the city's culture, real estate, the media, politics and the entertainment and...
, Rosenbaum called Modern Times, “a wildly overhyped disappointment... The new album is possibly the worst since Self Portrait
Self Portrait (Bob Dylan album)
Self Portrait is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's tenth studio album, released by Columbia Records in June 1970.Self Portrait was Dylan's second double album, and features mostly cover versions of well-known pop and folk songs. Also included are a handful of instrumentals and original compositions...
, with songs that rarely rise above the level of Dylan’s low point - and everybody seems afraid to say so."
Some reviewers who liked the album were critical of its musicianship, such as The Chicago Tribunes Greg Kot, and Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of the New York Times. He played jazz flute and piano, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in music. In the 1970s he was an associate editor of Crawdaddy!, and in the 1980s an associate...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, who wrote that "onstage Mr. Dylan’s touring band regularly supercharges his songs. But on Modern Times the musicians play as if they’re just feeling their way into the tunes."
According to Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, a site that tracks prominent critical opinion, Modern Times approval rating hovers around 89%, indicating wide acclaim and earning it the honor of 30th most-liked-by-critics album (on Metacritic) of all time.
The album became Dylan's third successive album to top the Village Voice's 'Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop
The Pazz & Jop critics' poll is a poll of music critics run by The Village Voice newspaper. It is compiled every year from the top ten lists of hundreds of music critics...
' poll. "Love and Theft" and Time Out of Mind
Time out of Mind
Time Out of Mind is the 30th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 30, 1997 on Columbia Records. It is his first double studio album since 1970's Self Portrait...
won in 2001 and 1997 respectively. The album was also placed at #1 on Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
Magazines list of the 50 greatest albums of 2006 http://stereogum.com/4165/rolling_stones_best_albums_of_06/list/ and #8 on the same magazines 100 greatest albums of the 2000s list http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-best-albums-of-the-2000s-20110718/bob-dylan-modern-times-19691231.
49th Annual Grammy Awards, 2007
- Bob Dylan won a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for the song, "Someday Baby".
- Modern Times won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album. By the end of 2007, Bob Dylan's Modern Times Album had sold over 6.3 million units worldwide.
Artwork and versions
The album's cover photo is Ted CronerTed Croner
Ted Croner Ted Croner was an American photographer and an influential member of the New York School during the 1940s and 1950s. His images are said to represent the best example of this movement.-Biography:...
's 1947 photograph Taxi, New York at Night. The image was previously used as a cover by the defunct band Luna
Luna (band)
Luna was a dream pop/indie pop band formed in 1991 by Dean Wareham after the breakup of Galaxie 500, with Stanley Demeski and Justin Harwood...
for their 1995 single "Hedgehog/23 Minutes in Brussels".
The album was released in both standard and special edition formats, with the special edition including a bonus DVD of four Dylan music videos. The DVD contains "Blood In My Eyes" (Promo Video), "Love Sick" (Live at the Grammys 1997), "Things Have Changed" (Promo Video) and "Cold Irons Bound" (Masked and Anonymous Video). Because of the length of the songs, the entire album stretched out to two LPs.
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Bob Dylan.- "Thunder on the Mountain"
- "Spirit on the Water"
- "Rollin' and Tumblin'Rollin' and Tumblin'"Rollin' and Tumblin" is a blues song that has been recorded hundreds of times by various artists. Considered as a traditional, it has been recorded with different lyrics and titles...
" - "When the Deal Goes Down"
- "Someday BabySomeday Baby"Someday Baby" is a Grammy Award-winning song by Bob Dylan and the fifth track on his 2006 album Modern Times.The song peaked at #98 in Billboard's Pop 100 singles chart, and was featured in a prominent iPod + iTunes commercial that appeared around the time Modern Times was released in early...
" - "Workingman's Blues #2"
- "Beyond the Horizon"
- "Nettie Moore"
- "The Levee's Gonna BreakWhen the Levee Breaks"When the Levee Breaks" is a blues song written and first recorded by husband and wife Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929. The song is in reaction to the upheaval caused by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927....
" - "Ain't Talkin'Ain't Talkin'Ain't Talkin is a song written by Bob Dylan appearing on his album 2006 Modern Times as the closing track. It is the longest track of the album. It derives its chorus from the more up-tempo "Highway of Regret" by The Stanley Brothers...
"
Music
- Bob Dylan – Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica, Piano
- Tony Garnier – Bass, Cello
- George G. Receli – Drums, Percussion
- Stu Kimball – Guitar
- Denny Freeman – Guitar
- Donnie Herron – Steel guitar, Violin, Viola, Mandolin
Chart positions
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Australian ARIA Australian Recording Industry Association The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956... Albums Chart |
1 |
| Austria Albums Chart | 2 | |
| Canadian Albums Chart | 1 | |
| Danish Albums Chart | 1 | |
| Finnish Albums Chart | 3 | |
| French Albums Chart | 17 | |
| Germany Albums Chart | 2 | |
| Irish Albums Chart | 1 | |
| New Zealand Albums Chart | 1 | |
| Norway Albums Chart | 1 | |
| Sweden Albums Chart | 2 | |
| Switzerland Albums Chart | 1 | |
| The Netherlands Albums Chart | 3 | |
| UK Albums Chart | 3 | |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
1 |
Certifications
| Country | Certification | Sales/shipments | Month/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| RIAA, US | Gold | 500,000 | September 2006 |
| Platinum | 1,000,000 | January 2007 | |
| CRIA, Canada Cria A cria is the name for a baby camelid such as a llama, alpaca, vicuña, or guanaco. It comes from the Spanish word cría, meaning "baby". Its false cognate in English, crya , was coined by British sailors who explored Chile in the 18th century and were quick to describe the camelids onomatopoeically... |
Platinum | 100,000 | March 2007 |