Tangled Up in Blue

"Tangled Up in Blue" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, which was released as the opening track on his 15th studio album Blood on the Tracks (1975). The song was written by Dylan and produced by David Zimmerman, Dylan's brother. Released as a single, it reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song concerns relationships and contains different narrative perspectives. Dylan has altered the lyrics in subsequent performances, changing the point of view and details in the song. The track was initially recorded in September 1974, but later re-recorded on 30 December of that year at Sound 80 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The latter version was released on Blood on the Tracks on 20 January 1975. The song received widespread acclaim from music critics, with particular praise for the lyrics. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 68 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. A number of alternate versions have been released, including multiple studio out-takes on The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks (2014). Dylan has performed the song live over 1,600 times. Background and recording The song was written in the summer of 1974, after Dylan's comeback tour with The Band that year and his separation from Sara Dylan, whom he had married in 1965. Dylan had moved to a farm in Minnesota with his brother, David Zimmerman, and there started to write the songs that were recorded for his album Blood on the Tracks. In the spring of 1974, Dylan had taken art classes at Carnegie Hall and was influenced by his tutor Norman Raeben, and in particular Raeben's view of time, when writing the lyrics. In a 1978 interview Dylan explained this style of songwriting: "What's different about it is that there's a code in the lyrics, and there's also no sense of time. There's no respect for it. You've got yesterday, today, and tomorrow all in the same room, and there's very little you can't imagine not happening". Richard F. Thomas, Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, has written that Dylan has been "characteristically vague" on the use of any specific painting techniques emulated while he was writing the words for the songs on Blood On The Tracks.