Hello, my name is Ben Burrell and welcome back to Bob Dylan album by album,

a podcast that takes an in-depth look into each Bob Dylan studio recording record by record.

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feel free to click the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts from for this episode we look

at one of the best albums ever made a record that feels incredibly personal but also tackles

universal themes of love loss acceptance and life i couldn't do it justice by confining this album to one episode,

so I've split it into a number of parts.

This is episode six part one,

and the album in question is Blood on the Tracks.

It was in another lifetime, one of toil and blood.

When blackness was a virtue, the road was full of mud.

I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the star.

This record is obviously a classic.

Often cited as Bob's masterpiece, this has many times been called the finest collection of love songs of the 20th century.

In fact, I don't think it's stretching it to call it the finest collection of love songs ever.

It perfectly encapsulates those feelings of love in all its different guises, from the

heady start of a relationship to its painful deterioration. The level of relatability as a listener

in these songs is astonishing. There's an intimacy too, not just in the sound, but in the feeling that only you and the composer understand what's being sung about.

Personally, I've always had the sense the record moves through the stages of the breakdown of a relationship over its ten songs,

starting with the initial separation on the opener tangled up in blue,

...