Bob Dylan has released a brand new song with ‘Murder Most Foul.’ The track has a 16:57 running time – and it’s an epic free association on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Little information was given about the surprise track, except for a brief statement from Dylan himself:
“Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty over the years.
“This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting.
“Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.
A Dylan representative said the statement was all the information they would be releasing about the song, so whether “a while back” means a matter of months or many years remains a mystery.
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Dylan’s last album of original material, Tempest, came out in 2012, although he has released three sets of his interpretations of songs from the Great American Songbook in-between, the last of which was the triple-album Triplicate in three years ago.
Rumours have been rampant that this year Dylan might be releasing his first album of self-penned songs in eight years, but there’s been no confirmation of that.
At times the lyrics speak literally of the Kennedy assassination, with a bent toward conspiratorial takes on the event, and at others, the song breaks more freely into a pop-culture fantasia.
When it comes to the actual assassination, Dylan doesn’t skimp on the details: “They blew off his head while he was still in the car,” he sings in the first stanza. Later on, he traces the car’s frantic exit away from Dealey Plaza in Dallas, even taking the first-person point of view of the deceased Kennedy: “Riding in the backseat next to my wife / And it’s straight on into the afterlife / I’m leaning to the left I got my head in her lap.”
Listen to ‘Murder Most Foul’ below.
