Bob Dylan took everyone by surprise when he recently shared his first new original song in eight years, “Murder Most Foul”. The 17-minute folk epic is about the “dark day in Dallas” that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Now, in anither pleasnt surprise, the legendary singer has dropped yet another song titled 'I Contain Multitudes’. "Today, tomorrow and yesterday too / The flowers are dying / Like all things do,” sings Dylan, his phrasing casual, his graveled delivery just above a whisper, ending the opening verse with a typically inventive turn of phrase: “I fuss with my hair / And I fight blood feuds / I contain multitudes", Bob Dylan shared the new song on Twitter.
The song has a eference to a line in Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” in his “Leaves of Grass” collection. In the first few verses, the musician compares himself to the likes of Anne Frank, Indiana Jones, Edgar Allen Poe and “them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones.”
Listen to Bob Dylan's 'I Contain Multitudes’ here
Bob Dylan’s last album of original songs, Tempest, came out in 2012. Still, he’s been busy recording collections of standards since then, most recently releasing Triplicate in 2017. His Bootleg Series continues to unearth rarities and other unreleased delights, as well, and last fall he shared sessions with Johnny Cash on Travelin’ Thru, 1967-1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15.
Dylan has had to cancel the Japanese leg of his 2020 tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he still plans to play North America this summer
