Modern Times (Bob Dylan album)

Modern Times
A blurry, black-and-white photograph of a taxi cab in front of a city skyline
Studio album by Bob Dylan
Released August 29, 2006
Recorded February 2006
Genre Folk rock, blues, rockabilly, Americana
Length 63:04
Label Columbia
Producer Jack Frost (Bob Dylan pseudonym)
Bob Dylan chronology

Bob Dylan: The Collection
(2006)		 Modern Times
(2006)		 Dylan
(2007)
Singles from Modern Times
  1. "Someday Baby"
    Released: August 29, 2006

Modern Times is the thirty-second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 29, 2006 by Columbia Records. 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 balladry, and was self-produced by Dylan under the pseudonym "Jack Frost". Despite 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 US 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.[1] 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. In the 2012 version of Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", Modern Times was ranked at number 204.

Band and production

The album was recorded with Dylan's touring band, including bassist Tony Garnier, 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."[2]

Anticipation

Dylan's historical stature, as well as his renewed critical acclaim following Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft, helped to make Modern Times a highly anticipated release. As with Love and 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.

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.

Additional sources

Two other sources of the album's lyrics were cited in the latter half of 2006. In September, The New York Times 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.[7][8][9] 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".[10]

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.[11] 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)[12]
"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)[12]
"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)[12]
"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)[12]

Fell considered the borrowings a 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.[11]

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 Newsweek 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".[13] 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,

Well, you have to understand that I'm not a melodist... My songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form. What happens is, I'll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That's the way I meditate. A lot of people will look at a crack on the wall and meditate, or count sheep or angels or money or something, and it's a proven fact that it'll help them relax. I don't meditate on any of that stuff. I meditate on a song. I'll be playing Bob Nolan's "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," for instance, in my head constantly—while I'm driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I'm talking back, but I'm not. I'm listening to a song in my head. At a certain point, some words will change and I'll start writing a song.
—Bob Dylan, April 4, 2004[14]

The lack of official credits is not a legal problem, given the age of the source material, 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.[15] 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'".

Critical reaction

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source Rating
Metacritic 89%
Review scores
Source Rating
AllMusic [16]
Blender [17]
Robert Christgau A+ [18]
Entertainment Weekly A [19]
The Guardian [20]
Rolling Stone [21]
Sputnikmusic [22]
Uncut
PopMatters [23]

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.[24]

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".[25] 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 balladry".[26]

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."[27]

Some reviewers who liked the album were critical of its musicianship, such as The Chicago Tribune‍ '​s Greg Kot,[28] 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."[29]

According to Metacritic, a site that tracks prominent critical opinion, Modern Times' approval rating hovers around 89%, indicating wide acclaim and putting it among the 100 most-liked-by-critics albums (on Metacritic) of all time.[30]

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 [31] and #8 on the same magazines 100 greatest albums of the 2000s list.[32]

49th Annual Grammy Awards, 2007

Artwork and versions

Because of the length of the songs, the entire album stretched out to two LPs.

The album's cover photo is Ted Croner'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".[34][35]

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, 1998), "Things Have Changed" (Promo Video) and "Cold Irons Bound" (Masked and Anonymous Video).

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Bob Dylan. 

No. Title Length
1. "Thunder on the Mountain"   5:55
2. "Spirit on the Water"   7:41
3. "Rollin' and Tumblin'"   6:02
4. "When the Deal Goes Down"   5:04
5. "Someday Baby"   4:56
6. "Workingman's Blues #2"   6:07
7. "Beyond the Horizon"   5:36
8. "Nettie Moore"   6:53
9. "The Levee's Gonna Break"   5:43
10. "Ain't Talkin'"   8:48
Total length:
 63:04

Personnel

Additional musicians
Technical personnel

Chart positions

Year Chart Position
2006 Australia Albums Chart [36] 1
Austria Albums Chart [36] 2
Canada Albums Chart 1
Denmark Albums Chart [36] 1
Dutch Albums Chart [36] 3
Finland Albums Chart [36] 3
France Albums Chart [36] 17
Germany Albums Chart [36] 2
Ireland Albums Chart [36] 1
Italy Albums Chart [36] 2
New Zealand Albums Chart [36] 1
Norway Albums Chart [36] 1
Poland Albums Chart [36] 30
Portugal Albums Chart [36] 12
Spain Albums Chart [36] 5
Sweden Albums Chart [36] 2
Switzerland Albums Chart [36] 1
UK Albums Chart [36] 3
US Billboard 200 [36] 1
Preceded by
Danity Kane by Danity Kane		 Billboard 200 number-one album
September 10–16, 2006 		Succeeded by
B'Day by Beyoncé Knowles
Preceded by
Carnival by Kasey Chambers		 Australian ARIA Albums Chart number-one album
September 4–10, 2006 		Succeeded by
Revelations by Audioslave

Certifications

Country Certification Sales/shipments Month/year
RIAA, US Gold[37] 500,000 September 2006
Platinum[37] 1,000,000 January 2007
CRIA, Canada Platinum[38] 100,000 March 2007

Notes

  1. ↑ NME, "Bob Dylan gets his first number one for 30 years", at NME.com; last accessed September 9, 2006.
  2. ↑ Lethem, Jonathan (September 7, 2006). "The Genius of Bob Dylan". Rolling Stone. p. 6. Retrieved 2006-11-02.
  3. ↑ "Ten Weirdest Shoutouts". Rolling Stone. July 9, 2007. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  4. ↑ "The Review by Ron Brown, published Sep. 21, 2006". Newreviewsite.com. 2006-09-21. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  5. ↑ music video, retrieved June 4, 2008 on YouTube
  6. ↑ BobDylan.com page: "Theme Time Radio Hour – Seasons 1 & 2".
  7. ↑ Rich, Motoko (September 14, 2006). "Who's This Guy Dylan Who's Borrowing Lines from Henry Timrod?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-05-11.
  8. ↑ Vega, Suzanne (September 17, 2006). "The Ballad of Henry Timrod". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-09-20.
  9. ↑ "The Answer, My Friend, Is Borrowin' ... (3 Letters)". The New York Times. September 20, 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-20.
  10. ↑ Polito, Robert. "Bob Dylan: Henry Timrod Revisited". Poetry Magazine (Poetry Foundation). Archived from the original on 2008-06-08. Retrieved 2009-05-11.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Fell, Cliff (October 7, 2006). "An Avid Follower of Ovid" (PDF). The Nelson Mail. Retrieved 2009-05-11.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Thomas, Richard F. (March 2007). "The Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan" (PDF) 22 (1). Oral Tradition Journal. pp. 35–36. Retrieved 2009-05-11.
  13. ↑ "Talk Transcript: Another Look at Bob Dylan – Newsweek Entertainment – MSNBC.com". Web.archive.org. 2007-02-06. Archived from the original on 2007-02-06. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  14. ↑ LA Times article: "Rock's enigmatic poet opens a long-private door"
  15. ↑ WNYC's Soundcheck, "Deconstructing Dylan," 6 September 2006, at WNYC.org; last accessed September 15, 2006.
  16. ↑ Jurek, Thom (2006-08-29). "Modern Times – Bob Dylan : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  17. ↑ Blender review
  18. ↑ "Robert Christgau review". Robertchristgau.com. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  19. ↑ "Entertainment Weekly review". Web.archive.org. 2008-07-09. Archived from the original on 2008-07-09. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  20. ↑ Alexis Petridis (2006-08-25). "The Guardian review". London: Arts.guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  21. ↑ "9/7/06 p.99 RS review". Web.archive.org. 2009-04-14. Archived from the original on 2009-04-14. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  22. ↑ "Sputnikmusic review". Sputnikmusic.com. 2006-09-01. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  23. ↑ Franco, Michael. "Bob Dylan: Modern Times < PopMatters". Popmatters.com. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  24. ↑ Jody Rosen, review of Modern Times, 30 August 2006, at Slate.com; last accessed September 9, 2006.
  25. ↑ Alexis Petridis, review of Modern Times, 25 August 2006, at Guardian.co.uk; last accessed September 9, 2006.
  26. ↑ Jim DeRogatis, review of Modern Times, 27 August 2006, at JimDero.com; last accessed September 11, 2006.
  27. ↑ "Modern Times". Warehouse Eyes. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  28. ↑ Greg Kot, review of Modern Times, 27 August 2006, at ChicagoTribune.com; last accessed September 9, 2006.
  29. ↑ Jon Pareles, review of Modern Times, 20 August 2006, at NYTimes.com; last accessed September 9, 2006.
  30. ↑ "Music High and Low Scores". Metacritic. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  31. ↑ "Rolling Stone‘s Best Albums of '06". Stereogum. 2006-12-14. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  32. ↑ "100 Best Albums of the 2000s: Bob Dylan, 'Modern Times'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  33. ↑ "GRAMMY.com". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on 2010-07-29. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
  34. ↑ Dansby, Andrew (May 1, 2009). "Bob Dylan's album covers sometimes just as powerful as his songs". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 2009-05-12.
  35. ↑ Goodman, Elizabeth (September 21, 2006). "Bob Dylan: Secret Luna Fan?". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2008-04-06. Retrieved 2009-05-12.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 36.2 36.3 36.4 36.5 36.6 36.7 36.8 36.9 36.10 36.11 36.12 36.13 36.14 36.15 36.16 36.17 "Bob Dylan: Modern Times". aCharts. Retrieved September 18, 2012.
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 "RIAA Gold and Platinum Search for albums by Bob Dylan". RIAA. Retrieved 2009-12-12.
  38. ↑ "Gold and Platinum ― March 2007". Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). Retrieved 2009-12-12.