4 of Bob Dylan’s Oddest Songs (That We Still Kinda Love)

We love Bob Dylan for a lot of reasons, including his willingness to go way out there with some of the songs he releases. Dylan’s idiosyncratic streak means that he’s unafraid to come out with some material that’s a tad off-kilter.

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Many casual fans might not know these four songs. And if you’re hearing them for the first time, you might be a bit confused by it all. But if you give them a chance, we guarantee their oddness will grow on you.

“All The Tired Horses” from ‘Self Portrait’ (1970)

You could make a pretty good argument that all of Bob Dylan’s 1970 album Self Portrait leans to the strange and unusual. These days, an album like that would receive plenty of internet press explaining that it was meant to be a collection of odds and sods. At the time, people reacted pretty vehemently to it. “All The Tired Horses”, as the very first song, sets the wacky tone. Those dropping the needle on the album were stunned to find an opener with only two lines repeated throughout the entire song. And at no point are those lines sung by Dylan. (A trio of female vocalists does the honor.) Yet “All The Tired Horses” casts a spell as a bittersweet piece of mood music that somehow conveys a lot with a little.

“If Dogs Run Free” from ‘New Morning’ (1970)

For the most part, Bob Dylan tried to keep things a bit more on the level of what folks expected of him with New Morning. After all, that album was following up Self Portrait, so he needed to do some damage control. And yet he couldn’t quite curb all his instincts to go off the beaten path. “If Dogs Run Free” features lyrics that sound somewhat improvised. That makes sense when you consider the song also includes Maeretha Stewart doing some scatting as Dylan spits the lyrics. It’s hard to say whether Dylan is attempting his own version of beat poetry or if he’s trying to parody it. In any case, there’s a mischievous tone in his voice that might just make you smirk as well.

“Man Gave Names To All The Animals” from ‘Slow Train Coming’ (1979)

Bob Dylan’s move to religious material confounded both his fans and critics. Too much was made over the content of the songs, however. People lost focus on the potency of the music to be found on the Slow Train Coming album, which was released in 1979. The fairest criticism is that Dylan harangues and lectures a lot on the album. “Man Gave Names To All The Animals” rectifies that somewhat by playfully including Dad jokes about how the different beasts of the world got their names. But even in that setting, Dylan gets serious at the end. He leaves the song to end on a cliffhanger when a snake enters the picture. This owns the distinction of being the only Dylan song turned into a children’s book.

“Tempest” from ‘Tempest’ (2012)

When Bob Dylan made his big comeback album Time Out Of Mind in 1997, he chose “Highlands”, clocking in at over 16 minutes, as the closing song. The inclusion of one epically long track on an album has become somewhat of a tradition for him ever since. “Tempest”, at just shy of 14 minutes, fills that role on the 2012 album of the same name. It’s a retelling of the Titanic story, which is a bit of a strange choice to start. And then it gets even weirder when Dylan includes the exploits of a character named Leo. This seemingly references Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor who starred in the blockbuster film, Titanic. Strange, and yet, in Dylan’s steady hands, quite moving.

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