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Tangled Up in Blue
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== Composition and lyrical interpretation == {{Listen|filename=Tangled Up In Blue.ogg|title="Tangled Up in Blue"|format=[[ogg]]|description=A 25-second sample of "Tangled Up in Blue". A writer from ''[[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard]]'' said that the "strong acoustic background" instrumentals were reminiscent of Dylan's early songs.<ref name=bb/>|pos=right}} With "Tangled Up in Blue", Dylan used shifting perspectives of time, influenced by his recent studies under Raeben.<ref name="Heylin2010" /> [[Michael Gray (author)|Michael Gray]] describes the structure of "Tangled Up in Blue's" lyrics as the story of a love affair and career and how the "past upon present, public upon privacy, distance upon friendship, [and] disintegration upon love" transform and are complicated over time.<ref name="GRAYENC">{{cite book |last=Gray|first=Michael |title=The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia| pages=659β661 |date=2008 |publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group]] |location=London|isbn=9780826429742}}</ref> Timothy Hampton, Professor of [[Comparative Literature]] and French at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], has described the structure of the lyrics as a set of [[sonnet]]s, with seven [[stanza]]s each of 14 lines, each with a [[Volta (literature)|volta]] after line eight.<ref name="Hampton2019">{{cite book|first=Timothy|last=Hampton|title=Bob Dylan's Poetics: How the Songs Work|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=51WRDwAAQBAJ|date=26 March 2019|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=978-1-942130-15-4|pages=132β133|access-date=October 5, 2020|archive-date=October 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201007115950/https://books.google.com/books?id=51WRDwAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> Dylan continually re-worked the lyrics and arrangement even after the album was released.<ref name="GRAYENC" /><ref name="Heylin2010" /> During his 1978 World Tour, the line starting "She opened up a book of poems" became "She opened up the Bible and started quotin' it to me", becoming one of the first public indicators of Dylan's conversion to Christianity.<ref name="GRAYENC" /> The version released on ''[[Real Live]]'', as performed throughout his 1984 Europe tour, differs radically in structure and lyrics from earlier versions, with a more cynical view of romance.<ref name="GRAYENC" /><ref name="Heylin2010" /> Dylan said in 1985 that he was more satisfied with the implementation of multiple viewpoints in the song than he had been with the original.<ref name="NYORK">{{cite magazine |last=Slate |first=Jeff |title=Bob Dylan's First Day with "Tangled Up in Blue" |url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/bob-dylans-first-day-with-tangled-up-in-blue |date=31 October 2018 |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |access-date=8 October 2020}}</ref> Dylan has often stated that the song took "ten years to live and two years to write".<ref>{{cite magazine | url=https://entertainment.time.com/2011/05/23/the-10-best-bob-dylan-songs/slide/tangled-up-in-blue/ | title=The 10 Best Bob Dylan Songs | magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | date=May 19, 2011 | access-date=July 1, 2014 | last=Sanburn |first=Joel | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714130734/http://entertainment.time.com/2011/05/23/the-10-best-bob-dylan-songs/slide/tangled-up-in-blue/ | archive-date=July 14, 2014 | url-status=live }}</ref> In a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan, Dylan said that although many people thought that the album ''Blood on the Tracks'' was autobiographical, "It didn't pertain to me. It was just a concept of putting in images that defy time β yesterday, today and tomorrow. I wanted to make them all connect in some kind of a strange way."<ref name="Flanagan2010">{{Cite book |first=Bill |last=Flanagan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BUAqAAAAQBAJ |title=Written in My Soul: Conversations with Rock's Great Songwriters |date=1 April 2010 |publisher=RosettaBooks |isbn=978-0-7953-1081-2 |access-date=6 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160506011534/https://books.google.com/books?id=BUAqAAAAQBAJ |archive-date=6 May 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> In his 2004 memoir ''[[Chronicles: Volume One]]'', Dylan claimed that ''Blood on the Tracks'' was "an entire album based on [[Anton Chekhov|Chekhov]] short stories. Critics thought it was autobiographical β that was fine."<ref name="OHAGAN" />
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