The more up-to-the-minute Dylan aficionados would know this very well by now, but an advance listing on a Norwegian website for the forthcoming Bob Dylan album from Sony/Columbia entitles it “I Feel A Change Coming On.” There doesn’t seem to have been any corroboration of this in the few days since it was discovered, so I don’t know how to judge if it’s true or not. According to David Fricke’s earlier piece in Rolling Stone (still the only “official” report on the new album), one of the songs on the album is titled I Feel A Change Coming On. So, perhaps Dylan is indeed making that song the title track, or perhaps the Norwegian website just reached for that fact in order to put a name on their listing.

What does it matter, anyhow? Not much, I guess. Album titles seem like a bit of a game for Dylan, and one that I fancy he enjoys. It’s not like the title of any album affects the content, but it does do curious things with people’s expectations. In an old interview which I’m too lazy to look up right now, I remember Bob Dylan talking about John Wesley Harding. He had the album completed, and he felt that this song, John Wesley Harding, was something that people would hear as being kind of light and pointless. They would think, “Why is this song here?” So, in a flash of brilliance, he decided to make that song the title track, so that people would think, hmm, there must be more to this song than meets the eye. He actually ’fessed up to this. (On the other hand, maybe there is more to that song than meets the eye. Sure, no kidding, I’m as crazy as the rest of them.) So, the album title actually serves a purpose there in framing the listener’s expectations. But it’s a game too.

In his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan recalls another album title situation:

I had just heard the song “New Morning” on the playback and thought it had come out pretty good. New Morning might make a good title, I thought, and then said it to [record producer Bob] Johnston. “Man, you were reading my mind. That’ll put ’em in the palm of your hand — they’ll have to take one of the mind-training courses that you do while you sleep to get the meaning of that.” Exactly. And I would have to take one of them mind-reading courses to know what Johnston meant by saying what he’d just said.

And yet … the title New Morning no doubt did play with the heads of listeners, and critics, to an extent. Coming after the general disappointment that the deliberate kiss-off of Self Portrait engendered, some wanted to think that this was a “new beginning” in the sense of being a return to form, and the title encouraged them to think that. Or, as Dylan wryly puts it in “Chronicles,” some decided that “the old him is back.” You can’t control how people are going to react to these things, but you can have fun with it, I suppose.

Titles would seem to be more deliberate, or more deliberated-over, when they are not “title-tracks,” but standalone expressions. E.g, Modern Times. I thought when I first heard that title — and have every reason still to think — that it was an impish joke on Dylan’s part. The album is no commentary on “modern times” as distinct from “old times” or any other times; like Dylan’s work in general, the songs are a commentary on the timeless things, the eternal conundrums and the persistent truths. If you keep singing about those things, they come true, because they’re always true. We think of our times as modern, but we’re no more advanced than the people who danced before the golden calf. This, if nothing else, in my belief, Bob Dylan’s songs comprehend.

Of-course, people can come up with all kinds of other theories about the title “Modern Times,” and they have, and you can’t much disprove anything anybody says on it.

I’ve never really figured out some other non-title-track titles, like Empire Burlesque, Infidels, or even Desire. Of-course I have theories, like any good Dylan nut, or can come up with some if pushed, but that’s another story.

As for “I Feel A Change Coming On” — I don’t think I need to specify how this will be speculated over if it is indeed the album title. All I’d personally say about it is that I also feel a change coming on, and I’ve felt it for many months. And it’s approaching faster every day. But then, y’know, those times are always a-changin’.

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Addendum: Via Dylan Tweets, a story in Mojo by someone who’s heard seven of the tracks that are expected to be on the new album. If you’re like me, you probably won’t want to read too much of this kind of thing. I like to hear the songs for myself, strangely enough.

(By the way, if you Twitter — and it’s entirely your choice — do check out RWB on there.)

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Addendum II 3/14/2009: The actual title of the new Bob Dylan album will be Together Through Life
, to be released on April 28th, 2009, according to Amazon.com today.

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