On This Day in 2006, Bob Dylan Hit No. 1 After a 30-Year Drought and Became the Oldest Living Musician To Top the Albums Charts

September 16, 2006, is a historic day for Bob Dylan, and for music. It was on this day that Dylan’s 32nd album, Modern Times, debuted at No. 1, marking his first time reaching the top of the charts in 30 years, since Desire came out in 1976.

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Dylan, at 65, also made history by becoming the oldest living musician to top Billboard‘s albums chart. Dylan held onto the title for five years, until then-85-year-old Tony Bennett broke the record in 2011 with his Duets II record.

Dylan wrote all ten songs on Modern Times by himself. The record includes “Someday Baby,” the only single Dylan released from the record. The song earned Dylan a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance.

Bob Dylan’s Music After ‘Modern Times’

Dylan continued to release music after Modern Times. The Minnesota native has released eight more studio albums since Modern Times, including his 2023 Shadow Kingdom record. Achieving some success, nothing has quite had the universal appeal as Modern Times did, 19 years ago. Not surprisingly, even Dylan sensed that Modern Times was going to be the end of an era for him, and a bookend of sorts to his historic career.

“The records I used to listen to and still love, you can’t make a record that sounds that way,” Dylan says ahead of the record’s release (via CBC).

“You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really,” he continues.

Dylan, whose self-titled first album came out 44 years prior, in 1962, concedes that technology, even back then, did little to actually enhance how music is made.

“You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them,” Dylan maintains. “There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static.”

Dylan also produces his own projects under the name Jack Frost. For Dylan, it’s the only way he knows how to make music.

“I feel like nobody’s gonna know how I should sound except me anyway,” Dylan says. “Nobody knows what they want out of players except me. Nobody can tell a player what he’s doing wrong. Nobody can find a player who can play, but he’s not playing, like I can. I can do that in my sleep.”

Photo by Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images