I Contain Multitudes

"I can change during the course of a day," says Billy The Kid, the Dylan character played by Richard Gere in the wonderful, facinating biopic I'm Not There (2007). "I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep, I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am, most of the time. It's like you got yesterday, today, and tomorrow, all in the same room."

17 April 2020, three weeks after the mind-boggling "Murder Most Foul", Dylan releases "I Contain Multitudes". It is five weeks before his 79th birthday, we are in the midst of a global pandemic, it has been eight years since Tempest, the last LP with Dylan originals, was released. And now we dare say: another new Dylan album is finally coming out, and it promises to be Dylan's best of the 21st century, the best since Time Out Of Mind (1997).

The expectation comes true. Rough And Rowdy Ways is acclaimed worldwide, effortlessly reaches the top of the charts, and is now indeed considered one of Dylan's Very Great Albums. And one of the flag-bearers of that magnificent album is the kaleidoscopic opening song, "I Contain Multitudes. Today and tomorrow and yesterday too, Dylan sings, our tour guide on the then following Long Strange Trip of the Naked Ape.