Blonde on Blonde

This article is about the Bob Dylan album. For other uses, see Blonde on Blonde (disambiguation).

Blonde on Blonde
A blurry photograph of Dylan
Studio album by
Bob Dylan
ReleasedJune 20, 1966 (1966-06-20)
RecordedJanuary 25 – March 10, 1966[a 1]
Studio
Genre
Length72:57
LabelColumbia
ProducerBob Johnston
Bob Dylan chronology
Highway 61 Revisited
(1965) 		Blonde on Blonde
(1966) 		Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits
(1967)
Singles from Blonde on Blonde
  1. "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
    Released: February 14, 1966
  2. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" / "Pledging My Time"
    Released: April 1966
  3. "I Want You"
    Released: June 10, 1966
  4. "Just Like a Woman" / "Obviously 5 Believers"
    Released: September 1966
  5. "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" / "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
    Released: April 1967

Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966,[4] by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.

Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited (both 1965). Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial".[5] It was one of the first double albums in rock music.

The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard Top LPs chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2003. In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2020.


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  1. ^ Lawrence, Jack (February 6, 2017). "Essential Albums: Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde". Redbrick. Archived from the original on March 31, 2017. Retrieved March 30, 2017.
  2. ^ a b Dolan, Jon (May 16, 2016). "Inside Bob Dylan's 'Blonde on Blonde': Rock's First Great Double Album". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
  3. ^ Wilentz 2009, pp. 122–124
  4. ^ Heylin 2017, p. 288n54: "After endless debates about the actual release date of Blonde On Blonde, and ludicrous suggestions it was during the tour itself, a Sony database of album release dates, for all titles in the vinyl era, confirms once and for all that it came out on June 20 1966 ..."
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Grayp5 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).