Review of Blood on the Tracks

http://popblerd.com/2013/03/21/blisterd-the-100-best-albums-of-the-70s-part-eight/

Nothing motivates Dylan to write a great song like estranged love. On Blonde on Blonde (1966), Dylan offered a handful of bitter tunes about erstwhile lovers, but Blood on the Tracks is a masterpiece of bile and vitriol. Dylan was going through a turbulent breakup with his wife Sara, and the subsequent resentment pours out of him on the album. On “Idiot Wind,” he suggests that there’s “an idiot wind blowing every time you move your teeth. You’re an idiot babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.” However, the more subtle assholery of “You’re a Big Girl Now” demonstrates just how petulant, condescending, and patronizing one can be in public towards one’s spouse. In the hands of a less skillful songwriter, the line “I’m going out of  my mind with a pain that stops and starts, like a corkscrew to my heart ever since we’ve been apart” might seem like the schmaltzy drivel of a drama queen’s high school journal.  When Dylan sings it, however, his tongue is firmly wedged in his cheek. There is no hint of sincerity in his voice, and the listener knows that he does not believe her to be a “big girl” in any sense of the word. I’m not sure of the actual biography (Dylan is notoriously vague and misleading about his personal history); however, I doubt that Sara would have been able to take him back even after Dylan wrote a relatively sincere love song in her name on his next album, Desire (1977), released just twelve months later. The title of Blood on the Tracks evokes imagery of someone having been hit by a train. Ostensibly, the blood is Bob’s, but the album suggests that Dylan was at the helm.