It\u2019s safe to say that, among music fans, Empire Burlesque<\/i> is one of Bob Dylan’s most ignored albums. On the second studio album following his Christian-music trilogy, Dylan was finding it harder and harder to fit in with the musical scene that was 1985, and even dabbled in his first music video for the song \u201cTight Connection To My Heart (Has Anyone Seen My Love)\u201d in an effort to remain relevant.<\/p>\n
Is this a great disc? Absolutely not\u2026 but there are moments on it which not only show that Dylan was indeed relevant, but prove to be some of his better work.<\/p>\n
That sentiment is most definitely not what you’d have coming off the first two songs on the album. Both \u201cTight Connection To My Heart\u201d and \u201cSeeing The Real You At Last\u201d feature the over-exaggerated Dylan vocals that decimated his previous release Real Live<\/i>. The opening track has not aged well as a single \u2013 and, honestly the overall production on the disc left a lot to be desired. So, it\u2019s safe to say the vibes for the album are not good straight out of the gate.<\/p>\n
But then Dylan throws a curveball in the form of a ballad — \u201cI’ll Remember You.\u201d\u00a0 Simply stated, it is a beautiful piece of music, and had the production work been better, this could have been one of Dylan’s most legendary songs of his career. Why it isn\u2019t often listed among his best works, I honestly have no idea, but it is the brightest light on this disc.<\/p>\n
The bulk of the remaining tracks on Empire Burlesque<\/i> are not quite in that same boat, but they benefit from the fact that Dylan finally<\/i> stops over-singing for the most part, and the more restrained vocals actually work to strengthen the selections here (with one exception). It’s not that songs like \u201cClean Cut Kid,\u201d \u201cEmotionally Yours\u201d or \u201cSomething’s Burning, Baby\u201d are bad, but they are just nothing out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n
Of these tracks, \u201cDark Eyes\u201d turns out to be the second most powerful on the disc, and even dares to suggest that Dylan is at his most powerful when he either strips his sound down to a more basic approach or when he takes on ballads. (This is something he’d cement in my mind with \u201cTo Make You Feel My Love\u201d many years later.)<\/p>\n
The one exception is \u201cWhen The Night Comes Falling From The Sky,\u201d which has been dubbed by many as \u201cdisco Dylan.\u201d It definitely is a different sound for him\u2026 and, honestly, it’s not a good one. The fact that the songwriting on this one is also on the weak side doesn’t help the cause much; it\u2019s one of the more forgettable efforts in Dylan’s career.<\/p>\n
Empire Burlesque<\/i>, in the end, is a letdown, but I’d be hard-pressed to say it’s a bad album. Indeed, it has two moments which absolutely prove that, over two decades into his career, Dylan was still capable of taking a good song and knocking it out of the park. I just wish there had been more moments like this on the album. It’s worth checking out, with some reservations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5866],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-44943","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bob-dylan","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44943"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44943"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}