Time Out of Mind - Songs

Songs

"Love Sick"

The first track on this album is "Love Sick", which was later also released as a single. Daniel Lanois later said about the recording process of this song, "We treated the voice almost like a harmonica when you over-drive it through a small guitar amplifier."

"Dirt Road Blues"

"Dirt Road Blues" was improvised from a country-blues riff of indeterminate origin. Lanois recalls, "He made me pull out the original cassette, sample sixteen bars and we all played over that ,..." Some critics criticized the performance for being 'mediocre' and for destroying the mood that was set up by the opening track. Michael Gray writes, "‘Dirt Road Blues’, which might under normal production circumstances be a heartening, even dexterous little rockabilly number, puts Dylan so far away and so tiny you just despair."

"Tryin' to Get to Heaven"

One of the most praised songs of Time Out of Mind is "Tryin' to Get to Heaven", largely because of Dylan's strong and clear vocals. It is also Dylan's only harmonica performance on the entire album.

"Not Dark Yet"

"Not Dark Yet", the second of two singles from the album, is arguably the most celebrated song on Time Out of Mind. "Not Dark Yet" was recorded at the early recording sessions, with "Not Dark Yet" featuring "a radically different feel", according to Lanois. " was quicker and more stripped-down and, he changed it into a civil war ballad."

This song is perhaps the clearest example of John Keats' influence on Dylan's writing. In his book Dylan's Visions of Sin, Christopher Ricks, a Boston University professor of humanities, draws parallels between "Not Dark Yet" and the Keats' poem Ode to a Nightingale. Broken down line for line, "similar turns of phrase, figures of speech, felicities of rhyming" can be found throughout "Not Dark Yet" and the Ode. Ricks also argues that "there is a strong affinity with Keats in the way that in the song night colours, darkens, the whole atmosphere while never being spoken of," just as Keats used winter to color and darken the atmosphere in another poem he wrote, To Autumn. "Dylan's refrain or burden is 'It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.' He bears it and bares it beautifully, with exquisite precision of voice, dry humour, and resilience, all these in the cause of fortitude at life's going to be brought to an end by death." A promotional video of this song was released. Since, original song was later attached to the footage there was no actual performance.

"Cold Irons Bound"

The next song, "Cold Irons Bound", won the 1998 Grammy for best male rock vocal performance. Oliver Trager describes the track as "biting" with "ricocheting guitar licks, rockabilly drums, distorted organ, and voice floating in a blimp of its own echo," in which "one can still hear, to paraphrase 'Visions of Johanna,' the ghost of electricity howling from the bones of Dylan's face..." Michael Gray also describes this song in detail:

"There's an interesting tension, too, in 'Cold Irons Bound,' perhaps more accurately an interesting inappropriateness between, on one side, the grinding electronic blizzard of the music and the cold, aircraft-hangar echo of the voice lamenting its sojourn across a lethal planet—fields turned brown, sky lowering with clouds of blood, winds that can tear you to shreds, mists like quicksand—and on the other side the recurrently stated pursuit of tenderness, in phrases that seem imported from another consciousness.."

"Make You Feel My Love"

The song "Make You Feel My Love" was recorded twice under the title "To Make You Feel My Love" by other artists: Billy Joel recorded the song for his Greatest Hits Volume III collection; Garth Brooks recorded it first for the Hope Floats soundtrack. It was recorded under the original title by Adele in her CD 19. This song was criticized for its lyrical inferiority by Robert Christgau and Greg Kot of Rolling Stone. In his review, Kot described the track as "a spare ballad undermined by greetingcard lyrics breaks the album's spell". Opposing his view, Dylan critic Paul Williams said that it was "refreshing" to his ears. He said: "...the ultimate effect is to strengthen the spell the whole record casts—thus musical and verbal break is exactly in place"

"Can't Wait"

The penultimate track of the album is "Can't Wait". An alternate version of this song is included in the album The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006. Greg Kot wrote, "On Time Out of Mind, paints a self-portrait with words and sound that pivots around a single line from the album's penultimate song, 'Can't Wait': "That's how it is when things disintegrate.""

"Highlands"

The closing track, the longest composition ever recorded by Dylan, the 16-minute "Highlands", most probably took its central motif ("My heart's in the highlands") from a poem by Robert Burns called "My heart's in the highlands" (published in 1790). In Jim Dickinson's account, "I remember, when we finished 'Highlands'—there are two other versions of that, the one that made the record is the rundown, literally, you can hear the beat turn over, which I think Dylan liked. But, anyway, after we finished it, one of the managers came out, and he said, “Well, Bob, have you got a short version of that song?” And Dylan looked at him and said: 'That was the short version.'"

The song describes a story of the narrator and his interactions with a waitress of a restaurant in Boston Town. Dylan mentions Neil Young and Erica Jong in this song. Though some critics such as Michael Gray and Paul Williams raved the composition, George Starostin pointed out its long length as the only flaw of Time Out of Mind. He said, "'Highlands' is just your ordinary decent blues stuff, and extending it in such a painful way could only be compensated with great lyrics, but the lyrics are in no way great.". Keith Phillips of The A. V. Club wrote: "The material here is generally slow and meditative, lending the work a consistent tone appropriately capped by the 16-minute "Highlands," a "Desolation Row"-style experiment with an extended song form; it's further proof that the singer/songwriter is far from coasting."