"Tangled Up In Blue" is a Bob Dylan song from Blood On The Tracks, his fifteenth studio album, released in 1975. It's catchy as hell, one of those Dylan songs without a chorus, just the phrase "tangled up in blue" repeated at the end of each verse.
Wikipedia tells us, "With 'Tangled Up in Blue,' Dylan used shifting perspectives of time, influenced by his recent studies under Raeben." Norman Raeben was an American painter, & what little I know about him, I'm not sure what exactly Raeben taught Dylan but I was initially confused by the shifting pronouns in the song. The confusion was compounded by different lyrics - & pronouns - on his Bootleg Series version & even more so the Real Live version, which feels about 65% rewritten.
Dylan denies the song is autobiographical but I suspect there's lots of real life in there somewhere. The song (& the album) has been part of my life's soundtrack for decades now.
Around the same time I got into Blood On The Tracks, I was writing terrible poetry for a Usenet group & just beginning my radio adventure. I remember trying to flip pronouns around like Dylan but of course I wasn't really trying to make a narrative. I was just putting words together & hoping they sounded nice.
Once on a camping trip, my girlfriend & I at the time tried to sing the song from memory. We didn't get it quite right. But trying to do so took up a considerable amount of time - much longer than the song itself.
When I mentioned this week's theme on the air, someone texted & requested this song. I was kinda hoping the person wanted the Bootleg Series version, but they specifically asked for the Blood On The Tracks version. Which doesn't bother me, I love the song.
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