OK, I guess I’ll be the one to do Dylan. These are his first 19 studio albums. Because of the large number, I am allowing 3 choices per poll. After a while I will take the best of the best and create a final poll. Don’t forget to vote in Part 2.
Best Bob Dylan Studio Albums (POLL) Part 1 - Select up to 3
Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
The Times They Are a-Changin’
Another Side of Bob Dylan
Bringing It All Back Home
Highway 61 Revisited
Blonde on Blonde
John Wesley Harding
Nashville Skyline
Self Portrait
New Morning
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
Dylan
Planet Waves
Blood on the Tracks
The Basement Tapes
Desire
Street-Legal
Slow Train Coming
0voters
These are Dylan’s most recent 19 studio albums. Because of the large number, I am allowing 3 choices per poll. After a while I will take the best of the best and create a final poll. Don’t forget to vote in Part 1.
I figured those would be the top three, but I’ve always enjoyed The Basement Tapes a lot more than Blood on the Tracks. Sure, you can argue that it’s more a Band album than a Dylan album, but every time I hear it some new song I’ve never paid much attention to claims its place as my favorite.
We need a Poll guide, I struggled to remember that to have more than one poll in a post you need to manually add a name to every poll in the post. I’m glad you added the public=true.
As shown below:
Blood On the Tracks is the only Dylan album I still listen to all the way through. Desire is my next favorite, but that’s because of memories, not because it’s that great.
The first list, it was hard to limit to 3. The second list, it was hard to pick 3 that I really liked.
First list-
Blonde on Blonde was the most polished of what I consider his epic albums. Visions of Johanna is a fantastic poem that happens to be set to music. The album is a good mix of what I consider serious and minor works.
Highway 61 Revisited has another masterpiece, Desolation Row along with Like A Rolling Stone and Ballad of a Thin Man. Great poetry all around.
Blood on the Tracks two masterpieces, Idiot Wind and Tangled Up in Blue. This album might well be the one he sang with the most passion.
Honestly I think BobLibDem’s list is probably right, but I wanted to register a vote for Desire, which I definitely consider his most underrated great album.
In my teens it was my favorite, didn’t quite get 61 and Blonde at 16. You can’t argue with the Top 6 so far, but there are so many other albums after the 80s that are are as good as anything he has ever done.
Gotta say to the OP, you scared me. I thought he had died.
I confess that I have not listened to his later works nearly as much as his first. I’ve heard them all but only a few times. I guess I lean on the works on more familiar with.
I have to confess that I didn’t vote in the second part of the poll because I just don’t know the albums at all. It’s a function of my age and what was happening at the time - I was at college, punk was morphing into new wave, and Dylan released… Slow Train Coming. I think that turned a part-generation off his later work. And then, dammit, I had to get a job and grow up a bit and all that stuff, and music is never quite as much to the fore after that. I know it’s not fair on later Dylan, but it’s how it is.