Murder Most Foul (song)

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"Murder Most Foul"
A picture of John F. Kennedy with the text "Murder Most Foul" on it
Single by Bob Dylan
from the album Rough and Rowdy Ways
Released March 27, 2020
Recorded February, 2020 [1]
Studio Sound City Studios
Genre Folk[2]
Length 16:56
Label Columbia
Songwriter(s) Bob Dylan
Script error: The function "ucfirst" does not exist. singles chronology
"Wigwam"
(2013)
"Murder Most Foul"
(2020)
"I Contain Multitudes"
(2020)

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date parameter should be reformatted to look like:
1 Jan 1970 or Jan 1, 1970
or removed.

Bob Dylan Twitter
@bobdylan

Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across 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. Bob Dylan

March 27, 2020[3]

"Murder Most Foul" is a single by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on March 27, 2020.[4][5] The song addresses the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the context of the greater American political and cultural history.[6][7] The song's title comes from a line in Hamlet.[8] It also appears as the 10th and final track on his album Rough and Rowdy Ways, released on June 19, 2020.

In a statement released with the single, Dylan indicated that "Murder Most Foul" was a gift to fans for their support and loyalty over the years.[9] Some critics saw the release and content of the song directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic.[10][11]

In addition to members of Dylan's touring band, the song prominently features both Fiona Apple and Alan Pasqua on piano.[12][13]

Composition and Recording

When asked by historian Douglas Brinkley for an interview in The New York Times if he had wanted to write a song about John F. Kennedy "for a long time," Dylan replied, "I'm not aware of ever wanting to write a song about J.F.K.” then reminded Brinkley that "Murder Most Foul" is about a crime, not a politician. When asked if he intended the song to express nostalgia, Dylan replied, "I don't think of ‘Murder Most Foul’ as a glorification of the past or some kind of send-off to a lost age. It speaks to me in the moment. It always did, especially when I was writing the lyrics out”.[14]

Fiona Apple and Alan Pasqua both recorded their piano parts for the song in a single day. Apple told Dylan she "was really insecure" about playing on the track but that Dylan "was really encouraging and nice. He was just like, 'You're not here to be perfect, you're here to be you.'”[15] Pasqua said of the session: "I told Bob: 'This is like (John Coltrane‘s) ‘A Love Supreme!’ He just kind of looked at me without saying anything, but it really is like ‘A Love Supreme’ to me. ‘Murder Most Foul’ is so profound and I get a lot of enjoyment out of making music with him. He transcends any musical genre. It's not rock, or folk, or pop. It's just Bob, man”.[13]

Themes

Some commentators have interpreted the song as Dylan asserting that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the result of a conspiracy of individuals and not Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.[16] Other critics, and even some of Dylan's fellow artists, however, have noted that, in spite of the specificity of many of the lyrics (e.g., "They blew off his head while he was still in the car"), "Murder Most Foul" ultimately seems to be less about the assassination of John F. Kennedy than the cathartic power of art in times of collective trauma.[17] According to John Barry of the Poughkeepsie Journal, this made the song a particularly fitting release in the early days of lockdowns precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic: "Framing the lyrical narrative of 'Murder Most Foul' is the assassination of Kennedy, which is perhaps Dylan's reminder that we are turning the coronavirus corner right now and things will never be the same, just as the world turned a corner when Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22, 1963".[18]

Dylan's fellow songwriter Nick Cave elaborated on the song's ability to provide comfort during the particular historical moment in which it was released: "Dylan’s relentless cascade of song references points to our potential as human beings to create beautiful things, even in the face of our own capacity for malevolence. ‘Murder Most Foul’ reminds us that all is not lost, as the song itself becomes a lifeline thrown into our current predicament. The instrumentation is formless and fluid and very beautiful. Lyrically it has all the perverse daring and playfulness of many of Dylan’s great songs, but beyond that there is something within his voice that feels extraordinarily comforting, especially at this moment. It is as though it has traveled a great distance, through stretches of time, full of an earned integrity and stature that soothes in the way of a lullaby, a chant, or a prayer".[19]

Release

The song was released unexpectedly on March 27, 2020 on Dylan's YouTube channel.[20] It was his first original song since 2012.[21][22] Lasting 16 minutes, 56 seconds, it is the longest song Dylan has released, eclipsing 1997's "Highlands" which runs for 16 minutes, 31 seconds.[21] Dylan issued a statement on the day that the single premiered calling it "an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting", which spurred speculation that the recording may have been years old and perhaps even an outtake from his 2012 album Tempest.[23] Fiona Apple later confirmed, however, that the song had in fact been recorded only one month previously, in February 2020.[24]

"Murder Most Foul" received radio airplay in spite of its extreme length. In an interview with Billboard, Bruce Warren, program director of WXPN in Philadelphia, said, "It's an instant Dylan epic. We had no concerns about playing it at all". This sentiment was echoed by Jim McGuinn, program director at KCMP in Minneapolis, who said, "I wasn't concerned at all. Our audience expects a bit of the unexpected. It's a wild ride, with Bob backed by a simple, alternating chord pattern. And we're in Minnesota...he's our favorite son". Billboard noted that helping the song's cause was the "Adult album alternative" radio format: "As non-commercial outlets, they don't need to worry about breaking for lengthy sets of ads, so even a song that runs over a quarter of an hour fits snugly into an almost nonstop musical flow".[25]

Critical response

National Public Radio (NPR) described the song as "unfold[ing] slowly over a delicate instrumental backing of violin, piano and hushed percussion. Dylan's vocal is rich and expressive as he veers between describing the assassination, the unfolding of the counterculture, and a roll call of musicians, movie lyrics and other pop culture references" and felt the song was "Dylan at his most incisive and cutting". NPR concluded that "Murder Most Foul" was "worth many repeated listens and will occupy any Dylanologist holed up at home".[26] Ann Powers and Bob Boilen of NPR analysed the song and identified over 70 songs referenced in the work.[27]

Writing in The Guardian, Ben Beaumont-Thomas felt that the song described Kennedy's assassination in "stark terms, imagining Kennedy being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb ... they blew off his head while he was still in the car / shot down like a dog in broad daylight'" and that Dylan created an "epic portrait of an America in decline ever since" with a form of salvation available in popular music with references to the Beatles, Woodstock and Altamont festivals, the rock-opera Tommy by The Who, Charlie Parker, Guitar Slim, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Warren Zevon, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Little Walter, Carl Wilson, and others.[9]

Jeff Slate, for NBC News wrote "It's also virtually devoid of melody, and unlike anything Dylan has ever released, with Dylan essentially delivering his spoken-word, stream of consciousness lyrics on top of a sparse accompaniment of piano, violin and light percussion."[28] Rolling Stone Deputy Music Editor Simon Voznik-Levinson praised the release, stating the song "is really about the ways that music can comfort us in times of national trauma. [...] For those of us who often turn to Dylan's catalog for that very purpose, 'Murder Most Foul' has arrived at the right time."[29] A brief review by Jesse Hassenger of The A.V. Club praised the combination of gritty vocals with haunting instrumentation.[30]

Kevin Dettmar of The New Yorker was less enthusiastic, calling the song "weird" and the first half "disappointing", explaining that "all the clichés aren't adding up to much". Dettmar continued, however, in a more favorable tone, saying that after the first ten minutes "something amazing happens: Wolfman Jack shows up and starts to play tracks". He stated that the last seven minutes of the song closely resembles a playlist "from one of the Theme Time Radio Hour shows that Dylan hosted from 2006 to 2009." The second half of the song makes reference to Warren Smith's "Uranium Rock", a song Dylan used to cover in his live shows in the mid-1980s; Billy Joel; and the Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley" from 1958. Dettmar admired the "ecumenicism" of the playlist the song has become, mentioning the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Stan Getz, Patsy Cline, the Everly Brothers, John Lee Hooker, the Animals and the Who. He continued, "The song itself becomes self-referential by including itself in the body of American song by which American history has not only been created, but also preserved: Play 'Love Me or Leave Me', by the great Bud Powell; Play 'The Blood-Stained Banner', play 'Murder Most Foul'".[7]

Salon's David Masciotra wrote a long, positive review that included reaching out to author David Talbot, who has written about the American intelligence community as well as the Kennedy family.[31] Craig Jenkins of Vulture wrote that the song "couldn't be more prescient" and stated that the song can be part of unifying Americans in a time of crisis.[32]

While reviewing Rough and Rowdy Ways in his Substack-published "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau said the track "sums up the musical grave-robbing Dylan has been transmuting into original art for 60 years now" while providing "an apt summum" to the album's "elegiac retrospective", "despite its excessive length and portentous isolation on the CD package". He concluded that, within the context of the album, it is "both an elegy for and a celebration of all the dark betrayals, stunted gains, enduring pleasures, and ecstatic releases of an American era Dylan has inflected as undeniably as any artist even if he doesn't understand it any better than you, me, or whoever killed imperfect vessel JFK".[33]

Rolling Stone placed the song fifth on a list of the 25 "Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century". In an article accompanying the list, Simon Vozick-Levinson addressed the song in the context of Dylan's having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016: "The specific names he asks the late Wolfman Jack to play on his cosmic radio hour are less important than the sheer quantity of them. It’s as if the Nobel Prize made Dylan want to extend that same respect to every other popular musician whose work deserves to be canonized. As the final verses roll on, he sounds like he’s naming every song he can before we forget them, inscribing them all in a Book of Life expressed in the form of a midnight playlist".[34]

Unofficial music video

An unofficial music video, created by feature-film editor Bob Mori (Pulse), was uploaded to YouTube on April 4, 2020.[35] The video, spanning the duration of the entire song, consists solely of hundreds of film clips culled from archival sources, many of which feature the historical figures, musical artists and movies referenced in Dylan's lyrics. Dylan scholar and author Michael Gray referred to it on Twitter as "a rather brilliant (and beautifully timed) 17-minute film".[36]

Cultural references

As with "I Contain Multitudes", there are many references to other artists and works of art through the ages in "Murder Most Foul". One of the most interesting comes in the song's penultimate line where Dylan sings "Play 'Love Me or Leave Me' by the great Bud Powell".[37] In addition to being the last artist named in the song, jazz pianist and composer Powell is also the only one, among the dozens listed, whose name is preceded by an adjective. Furthermore, the reference is notable because Powell never actually recorded "Love Me or Leave Me". He did, however, compose a contrafact titled "Get It" that is based on the same chord structure as "Love Me or Leave Me". Dylan scholar Laura Tenschert believes that this may have been Dylan's clever, indirect way of acknowledging his own predilection for musical appropriation in songwriting.[38]

The line "And play it for Carl Wilson, too / Lookin’ far, far away down Gower Avenue" is actually a reference to Warren Zevon's 1976 single "Desperados Under the Eaves". Beach Boy Wilson sang backing vocals on that track and his voice is "particularly audible" on the closing refrain ("Look away down Gower Avenue, look away").[39]

The line "Take me back to Tulsa to the scene of the crime" contains an obvious reference to "Take Me Back to Tulsa", one of the signature songs of the western swing band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Some critics believe that Dylan's addition of "to the scene of the crime", however, may be a secondary reference to the Tulsa race massacre in 1921, an event that, like JFK's assassination, engendered collective trauma.[40][41]

NPR's Bob Boilen and Ann Powers attempted to identify all of the individual songs referenced in "Murder Most Foul". They made the resulting 74-song playlist available to stream via Spotify and Apple Music.[42]

Charts

This song was the first Bob Dylan track to top any Billboard chart.[5]

Chart performance for "Murder Most Foul"
Chart (2020) Peak position
Scotland (Official Charts Company)[43] 7
UK Download (Official Charts Company)[44] 6
US Digital Songs (Billboard)[45] 8
US Hot Rock Songs (Billboard)[46] 5
US Rock Digital Song Sales (Billboard)[5] 1

Accolades

Accolades for "Murder Most Foul"
Publication Accolade Rank
Variety 40 Best Songs of the 2020[47] 2
Rolling Stone The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century[48] 5
Paste 50 Best Songs of 2020[49] 6
Pitchfork 100 Best Songs of 2020[50] 6
Star Tribune 10 Best Songs of 2020[51] 6
The Fader 100 Best Songs of 2020[52] 7
NPR 100 Best Songs of 2020[53] 7
The New Yorker 10 Best Songs of 2020[54] 7
Our Culture Mag 25 Best Songs of 2020[55] 10
The Guardian 20 Best Songs of 2020[56] 13
American Songwriter 20 Best Songs of 2020[57] N/A
Ultimate Classic Rock 20 Best Songs of 2020[58] N/A
Billboard 100 Best Songs of 2020[59] 76
Inside Hook 100 Best Songs of 2020[60] N/A

Cover versions

The song was covered by The Milk Carton Kids' Kenneth Pattengale who released his version on YouTube on April 4, 2020.[61]

See also

References

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  43. "Archive Chart: 20200403". Scottish Singles Top 40. Retrieved April 4, 2020.
  44. "Archive Chart: 20200403" UK Download Chart. Retrieved April 4, 2020.
  45. "Bob Dylan – Chart history" Billboard Digital Songs for Bob Dylan. Retrieved April 9, 2020.
  46. "Bob Dylan – Chart history" Billboard Hot Rock Songs for Bob Dylan. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
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External links

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