The Bob Dylan Top 125 Countdown & This Week's Statistics

For some of you it's still Sunday, while for the rest it's already Monday. Otherwise, it's the day of the week that we discuss our statistics and we count down my favorite Dylan songs.

At #87 is a song that appears in the first of Dylan's three masterpieces in a row, the album Bringing It All Back Home (1965). The song is called Gates of Eden, and it's one of Dylan's more surreal songs. In a 2005 Mojo magazine poll of its writers and various well-known musicians, Gates of Eden was ranked 69th among Dylan's 100 greatest songs.

The lyrics describe others besides the narrator who are searching for truth in this false paradise. But the experiences that the characters endure are rendered meaningless at the end of each verse by the inevitable specter of the Gates of Eden. In the first verse, a cowboy angel riding on the clouds searches for the sun using a black wax candle. In the second verse, the cry of babies longing for the silence of Eden is shrouded by the industrialized city and its metallic objects. In the third verse, a savage soldier sticks his head in the sand like an ostrich and waits with a deaf hunter for the mythical ship to Eden. In the fourth verse, Aladdin with his magic lamp and monks riding on the Golden Calf promise paradise, and listeners only laugh at the promise once they actually get to Eden. The fifth verse describes Marxists philosophizing and waiting for kings to succeed each other, while their intended audience ignores them, knowing that there are no kings in Eden.

In verse six, a motorcycle hipster torments his opposite, a midget businessman, as vultures look on. Although both the hipster and the businessman are concerned with sin, there are no sins in death or in Eden. The seventh verse tells us that Blakean "kingdoms of Experience" eventually rot, poor people battle each other over their meager possessions and the nobility just babbles on, but none of it matters in Eden. In the eighth verse, people attempt to change their fates, but it is all futile once they get to Eden. In the final verse, the narrator's lover tells him of her dreams, but the narrator realizes that his dream of death is the only truthful one, perhaps taking an example from the lover who tells rather than tries to interpret her dream.

"This is called 'a sacrilegious lullaby in D minor,'" Dylan joked to his audience on Halloween 1964 at New York's Philharmonic Hall. Written in the early summer and recorded in one take the following winter, the acoustic B side to Like a Rolling Stone features some of his spookiest imagery ever – the savage soldier, the motorcycle-black Madonna, the gray-flannel dwarf – all destined for the Gates of Eden, which turns out to be no paradise at all, but a place of deafening silence, with no kings, trials or sins. It's an anthem against the notion of heavenly redemption: "Lotta people wait until they're at the end of the line," Dylan said years later. "You don't have to wait that long. Salvation begins right now, today."

This is a bootleg version:

At #86 we find I Threw It All Away. It appears on Dylan's 1969 album called Nashville Skyline. It was released as a single later that year, and it reached number 85 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 30 on the UK Singles Chart. It is considered to be one of the best and most popular songs on the album.

The song's regretful lyrics suggest that it is an apologia for the sharp turn Dylan's career had taken, from the hard-touring, reluctant Pop oracle to a clean-cut homebody who longed to be a part of the Nashville machine.

In a 2005 poll reported in Mojo, I Threw It All Away was listed as the #55 all time Bob Dylan song. In 2002, Uncut listed I Threw It All Away as the #34 all time Bob Dylan song.

Dylan performed I Threw It All Away live for the first time on The Johnny Cash Show, broadcast on June 7, 1969.Here it is:

Finally for today, at #85, is I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met). It's a song from his fourth studio album, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), which Dylan biographer Robert Shelton describes as being about "the intoxication of a night of love followed by the throbbing headache of his partner's emotional abandonment and detachment."

As Dylan himself, introducing it at his Halloween, 1964 performance said, "This is about all the people that say they've never seen you..."

Here's an outtake from the album's recording sessions:

Now, let's move on to this week's statistics. I'm glad to say that this week the total visits more than doubled compared to the last few weeks, which in turn also showed an increase from the weeks before. It seems like we're doing something right. The increase is mostly attributed to readers from the US and from Russia, but also to readers from the UAE. Italy and China also had a very good week.

The full Top 10 is as follows:

1. the United States

2. Russia

3. Greece

4. the United Arab Emirates

5. Germany

6. the United Kingdom

7. Italy

8. France

9. China

10. Cyprus

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence this week (alphabetically): Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Egypt, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Happy to have you all!

One big change in the all-time Top 10: Ireland, after a continuous presence in the Top 10 practically from the start, has been replaced at #10 by Italy, which was in the Top 10 for some time and was recently deposed by the UAE. The biggest battles at the moment are between France and the UK for the #5 position, and between Cyprus and Italy for the #9 position. Here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 49.2%

2. Greece = 16.5%

3. Russia = 9.2%

4. Germany = 3.1%

5. France = 2.4%

6. the United Kingdom = 2.36%

7. the United Arab Emirates = 1.49%

8. Canada = 0.9%

9. Cyprus = 0.8%

10. Italy = 0.76%

That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!