I see everything in terms of cycles, and my prediction is that eventually there will be a revival of critical opinion on this, Empire Burlesque, Dylan's 23rd studio album, which had decent contemporaneous reviews but has seen its legacy slide to the bottom of the barrel. Go ahead, search any clickbaity "Dylan Albums Ranked" article, and find this 1985 album chilling around the low 30s. I get it. It's not his best. But I also believe that it's considered bad now because the production value of this album is out of style, that's all. And what I'm saying is that styles are cyclical. The new-wave '80s shit is totally in vogue. Why not the corny-ass soft rock '80s shit too?
Yes, sure, I would've been pissed if I was alive and cognizant of Dylan's output and legacy in 1985 and heard this. I would've been right there with ya, bummed that he wasn't making rock music like he did at his critical '60s peak or any brief '70s revival period. Or maybe I would've been relieved that he made it out of his Born Again period alive and was briefly intrigued by Infidels before ultimately giving up hope here or something, I don't know. That's not how it is for me, though. I was born in 1988, I discovered Dylan for myself in like 2003 or 2004, and over two decades later I'm still working my way through his massive body of music, and grappling with each unique piece of art one at a time. I'm not weighed down with baggage like that. I have zero expectations.
Either that or I'm purposefully leaning against the standard critical take for Empire Burlesque, which is that it's bad. It's not bad, and if by saying it's not bad makes me a contrarian, then so be it. I wouldn't bullshit you on this. I think it is actually the right album to be contrarian on. Bob Dylan, by all accounts, didn't really give a shit about this album. Whoever wanted to jam with him was invited in. According to Ronnie Wood (current Rolling Stone, and a session musician for at least one track here), Dylan also let the mixing team do whatever they wanted, with very little pushback. A Dylan homer might blame the quality of the music on that little factoid. I'm not a homer, I'm a contrarian, and I say that the shitty mixing makes the music BETTER. I'm a contrarian in the Bob Dylan tradition.
The presence of female backup singers throughout most of the songs on this album is pretty funny, though. That, I think, is the thing that dates this album more than anything else (included the gated drums, which I feel like these days are, while not necessarily in vogue, at the very least chalked up as a necessary and inconsequential hurdle of any worthy 1980s music). There were a couple female singers included in the Empire Burlesque sessions, including Carol Dennis, Dylan's soon-to-be wife. Apparently their marriage and the fact that they had a kid together wasn't known to anyone until nine years after they divorced in 1992, in a biography. Messy stuff. Probably makes Empire Burlesque better, if you ask me.
Unlike my recent experience with similarly shrugged off Dylan late-career deep cut Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, from which I walked away a changed man, knowing that there were some deeply wonderful little pieces of art hidden among the wreckage of a deep career, I walk from Empire Burlesque confident that I have just walked through a valley, staring up at the peaks on either side. And at this point, if I'm being honest, I find the valleys to be infinitely more interesting. More importantly, though, I walk away with hope. I can see the future, and I know that this shit always swings back around. I think that people are eventually going to rediscover Empire Burlesque. I think my generation and the next one are going to start giving it its due once these boomers starting dying off, and taking with them into the grave their crusty old Dylan album rankings. Join me, why don't you, in hearing the future in the form of the past.
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