5:14
Tempest, 2012
Written by Bob Dylan
Melodically, this is one of the most stripped-down songs Dylan ever recorded. The band locks into a simple, repetitive blues groove and barely budges. Dylan's vocal is even more extreme: rather than singing a conventional melody, he mostly declaims the lyrics like a street preacher. As is nearly always the case in his later material, Dylan's lyrics meander, contain non sequiturs, quote snippets of this and that, toss out lines both surreal and profane, evoke a dark world of gangsters, power brokers, and conflict: "I was up on black mountain the day Detroit fell / They killed them all off and they sent them to hell / Ding Dong Daddy, you’re coming up short / Gonna put you on trial in a Sicilian court." Whether Dylan is talking about ancient Rome, modern street gangs, or power itself hardly matters. The song is about people who believe their authority is permanent, who assume the world will always work in their favor. The relentless groove reinforces the idea that this is how things are, this is how they've always been, and this is how they'll always be. However, the lyric tells us that empires do crumble and fall.
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