Alongside the launch of a new ‘Dylan60’ Microsite, today sees the release of a new music video, “Subterranean Homesick Blues 2022,” to commemorate Bob Dylan’s 60th Anniversary as a ‘recording artist of immeasurable musical and cultural impact’.
Around this time last year, we ran a Bob Dylan series of features titled the Bob Dylan Appreciation Society and the first in that series tackled those essential Dylan releases in which Danny Neill says “I cannot think of any songwriter who has so entertainingly maintained such levels of excellence, fascination, depth, intellect, wisdom, laughter, drama and mystery.”
He later adds “And Dylan has, in his own perversely unique way, perfected the art of capturing spontaneous magic on tape. Not through generating a polish out of repetition, quite the opposite, it is in his pursuit of first take, unfiltered, raw imperfection. Many have had a problem with this over the years, but it is hard to ignore that the newborn freshness heard on so many of his classic recordings is the very essence of what makes them timeless.”
The new video, “Subterranean Homesick Blues 2022,” features a kinetic collage of visuals by a diverse array of artists inspired by the original video’s lyric cue cards.
Developed by the independent creative agency Intro, and Sony Music’s Josh Cheuse, the new “Subterranean Homesick Blues 2022” clip pays homage to the iconic opening sequence of D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (the game-changing cinéma vérité documentary chronicling Dylan’s 1965 UK tour) with new lyric/cue card visuals created by contemporary artists, filmmakers, musicians and graphic designers. The handwritten cue cards in Pennebaker’s original clip–featuring selected words and phrases from the song seasoned with deliberate misspellings, puns and ‘hidden’ jokes–have been visually reinterpreted and redesigned for the new short film by Julian House, Patti Smith, Zep, Cey Adams, Francis Cabrel, Wim Wenders, Anthony Burrill, Naoki Urasawa, Michael Joo, John Squire, Azazel Jacobs, Bruce Springsteen, Futura, Noel Fielding, Jim Jarmusch, Bobby Gillespie, Paris Redux, Wolfgang Niedecken, Jun Miura, Kate Gibb, Jonathan Barnbrook, Dave Shrigley, and Eric Haze.
As a companion to “Subterranean Homesick Blues 2022,” fans may experience an Augmented Reality lens filter, on Instagram and Snapchat, that allows users to try on a virtual pair of Dylan’s iconic Ray Ban sunglasses while a select 10-second loop of the new “Subterranean Homesick Blues 2022” video plays in the lenses.
The new “Subterranean Homesick Blues 2022” music film and AR lens filter may be found on the new Dylan60 microsite, which also includes both the original and the newly-designed lyric/cue cards (with artist attribution for the new images) and the classic original clip starring Bob Dylan (with background cameo appearances by Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth).
The lead track and first single from 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home (Dylan’s fifth studio album for Columbia), “Subterranean Homesick Blues” was one of the artist’s first releases to showcase his new electric sound and became the first Dylan record to break into the US Top 40. A groundbreaking highly influential record, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” has been cited as a precursor to rap while the song’s video clip–featuring Dylan staring into the camera while throwing out lyric/cue cards–is widely acknowledged as one of the cornerstones of music video history.
Visit the Dylan60 Microsite here: https://www.dylan60.com/
The Bob Dylan Center is scheduled to open in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 10, 2022. Designed by Olson Kundig, the Bob Dylan Center will house and exhibit more than 100,000 exclusive cultural treasures created and owned by Bob Dylan over seven decades. These include handwritten lyric manuscripts to some of the world’s most treasured songs, previously unreleased recordings, never-before-seen film performances, rare and unseen photographs, visual art and other priceless items spanning Dylan’s unparalleled career as one of the world’s most important cultural figures.
Read our Bob Dylan Appreciation Society Series