Dylan Revisited: Positively 4th Street (1965)

A classic one-off single fueled by spite and filled with quotable insults.

This is a series by DylanRevisited based on former Twitter threads, now available here in an easier to read and longer lasting format.

Just one month after unleashing his rock monster Highway 61 Revisited on the world, Bob Dylan released an absolute belter of a single called Positively 4th Street.

This song wasn’t on Dylan’s latest album, which modern record company executives with marketing budgets in mind must think is an insane thing to do. But back in the 1960s, it was more common. For example, She Loves You didn’t appear on a Beatles album in the UK.

Dylan was in the middle of a run of three classic albums that would have a major impact on folk music, rock'n'roll and the vinyl format. Yet he's still able to land a knockout one-off like Positively 4th Street.