91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn

Bob Dylan Looks To The Ageless American Songbook

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

Bob Dylan's unusual new album Shadows in the Night consists of ten cover versions of standards from the American Popular Songbook including "Autumn Leaves" and "Some Enchanted Evening." Dylan is accompanied by a five-piece band on songs that usually use orchestral accompaniment, and the singer has said the recordings were done live in "one or two takes." Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker says Dylan both infuses the songs with his personality, while also allowing them to be heard anew.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Ken Tucker reviews rock, country, hip-hop and pop music for Fresh Air. He is a cultural critic who has been the editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, and a film critic for New York Magazine. His work has won two National Magazine Awards and two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards. He has written book reviews for The New York Times Book Review and other publications.
Stories From This Author
  1. Taylor Swift's confessional 'Tortured Poets' would have benefitted from an edit
  2. Beyoncé bucks the country industry establishment with sprawling 'Cowboy Carter'
  3. Tierra Whack springs to the forefront of hip-hop creativity on a new album