Troubadour: Songs of Bob Dylan

Troubadour is a study of Bob Dylan's lyrics. The areas of Dylan's writing covered include the early 'protest' and relationship songs, his mid-sixties explosion of poetic song tied to a classic rock beat, and a more mature look at relationships from the album Blood On The Tracks. Then the second part of the book examines how the later Dylan has created a new song-writing style; a process that began with the nursery-rhyme-drenched Under the Red Sky and evolved via his two nineties cover albums to emerge on Time Out Of Mind and fully flower on 2001's triumphant return to top form, "Love and Theft".

"The book begins with an extremely good, substantial introduction discussing the thorny questions of performance versus words in Dylan’s art, which he covers very thoroughly and with great alertness of judgement. And does so in a fresh tone of voice,which is quite an achievement.
That hugely valuable freshness steps up a whole other level when he looks anew at ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. It’s a main strength of the book that Muir refocusses on exactly the songs we most take for granted and so largely fail to hear. Indeed he has tackled ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ better than anyone
has ever done: bringing out, and with genuine vigour,not only the whys and hows of its original impact but equally well the enduring subtleties and intelligence of the song. At the other end of Troubadour is a very substantial scrutiny of the ‘‘Love and Theft’’ album, with some invaluable tracking of what has been loved and thieved from where, assiduously footnoted yet assembled with all the enthusiasm prompted by the newness and excellence of the album." Michael Gray, "The Bob Dylan Encyclopaedia"