Oh Mercy - Aftermath

Aftermath

After disappointing sales with Knocked Out Loaded and Down in the Groove, Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback in a year when several long-time veterans were releasing their own 'comeback' albums, including Paul McCartney with Flowers In The Dirt, The Rolling Stones with Steel Wheels, Neil Young with Freedom, Tom Petty with Full Moon Fever, Bonnie Raitt with Nick of Time, and Lou Reed with New York. Consensus was strong enough to place Oh Mercy at #15 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1989. Also in 1989, Oh Mercy was ranked #44 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.

Oh Mercy's production was unlike anything ever released on a Dylan record, and it drew praise from a majority of critics. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote, "Daniel Lanois's understated care and easy beat suit casual ways, and three or four songs might sound like something late at night on the radio, or after the great flood. All are modest and tuneful enough to make you forgive 'Disease of Conceit,' which is neither."

But as Heylin notes, "Though many a critic who had despaired at the sound of Dylan's more recent albums enthused about the sound on Oh Mercy, it was evident that rock music's foremost lyric writer had also rediscovered his previous flair with words."

Bill Wyman even went so far as to criticize the production in praising the songs. "Taken over by Daniel Lanois, master of a shimmering and distinctive electronically processed guitar sound... is overdone", writes Wyman. "It's irritating to hear Dylan's songs so manipulated, but there are sufficient nice tracks—"Most of the Time", "Shooting Star", both simple and direct, among them—to make this by far the most coherent and listenable collection of his own songs Dylan has released since Desire."

Though it did not enter Billboard's Top 20, Oh Mercy remained a consistent seller, enough to be considered a modest commercial success.

By the end of the year, Dylan would begin planning his next album, to be produced by Don and David Was of Was (Not Was), using the Oh Mercy outtake "God Knows" as a starting point.

To celebrate the album's 20th anniversary, Montague Street Journal: The Art of Bob Dylan dedicated roughly half of its debut issue (published in 2009) to a roundtable discussion on Oh Mercy.

In 2006, Q magazine placed the album at #33 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s". During that same year, "Political World" appeared in the film Man of the Year.