For Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday this past week, Variety selected 80 of the best or most undervalued interpretations of Dylan’s work ever recorded. Was that sufficient covers coverage? The answer is clear, if you at all appreciate the catalog of the man often revered as rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest songwriter: 80 is not enough, any more than eight would be.
That’s why, to cap off Dylan’s birthday week, we’ve come up with 50 more must-hear tracks from among the untold thousands that exist to be mined. This bonus-tracks addendum includes still more classics from the Byrds, Joan Baez, Nina Simone, Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Cash, all of whom were represented on our previous list of 80… along with covers that may surprise you from Beck, Cat Power, Alicia Keys, XTC, the Rolling Stones, the Specials, Townes Van Zandt, the Ramones and even David Lynch.
Join us for a journey through his back pages with contributions from Variety staffers Steven Gaydos, William Earl and Chris Willman and contributors Chris Morris and Jessica Hundley. As the birthday boy himself might say, if you gotta go, go now… or else you gotta stay all 50!