The best lyrics from Bob Dylan’s album ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’

With the release of his 39th studio album “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” singer and songwriter Bob Dylan builds on a career dense with memorable verbiage. Long regarded as a master of both free and rhymed verse, his lifetime’s work is so impressive that most Americans have been told this at least once a month since birth, don’t need to hear it again and are already reading past this introduction.

Whether coupling “flowers on your tomb” with “curtains in your room” in “Idiot Wind,” “Botticelli’s niece” and “masterpiece” (“When I Paint My Masterpiece”) or “murmur of a prayer” and “it’s getting there” in “Not Dark Yet,” Dylan’s Nobelwinning way with the English language has connected his 58 years worth of studio recordings.

Unlike “Like a Rolling Stone” and any number of rhyme-less classic works in the Dylan canon, the 10 new songs on “Rough and Rowdy Ways” rely heavily on metered verse and earpleasing connections.

Within his lyrics, Dylan name-checks Julius Caesar, East L.A., Wolf Man Jack, Harry Truman, Patsy Cline, Indiana Jones, St. Peter, Karl Marx, Don Henley, Frédéric Chopin, Leon Russell, John F. Kennedy, Calliope, Cadillacs, Georgy Zhukov, Sigmund Freud, Glenn Frey, Elvis Presley, Ludwig van Beethoven, Deep Ellum, the Holy Grail, “Scarface Pacino and the Godfather Brando,” Trojan women, Carl Wilson, Scarlett O’Hara, Gower Avenue and the Acid Queen, among others.

Below, here are the best lyrics from “Rough and Rowdy Ways.”

After three studio albums of other writers’ work, Dylan seems to race out of the gate in the album’s opening song, “I Contain Multitudes”:

You greedy old wolf, I’ll show you my heart

But not all of it, only the hateful part

I’ll sell you down the river I’ll put a price on your head What more can I tell you? I sleep with life and death in the same bed. Beatles or Stones? Dylan’s previous studio album of new material, “Tempest,” closed with “Roll On, John,” about John Lennon. “I Contain Multitudes” references another British Invasion band:

I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones

And them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones

I go right to the edge, I go right to the end

I go right where all things lost are made good again. Few songwriters write lyrics that read as well on the page as coming out of the speakers, especially when they’re indicting America’s greediest as on “False Prophet”:

Bury them naked with their silver and gold

Put them six feet under and pray for their souls. Despite the sheer volume of proper names that populate “My Rough and Rowdy Ways,” the songwriter doesn’t mention anyone in the current U.S. administration. But given his long-running contempt for politicians and liars, perhaps the vague references that populate “False Prophet” are enough:

Put out your hand, there’s nothing to hold

Open your mouth, I’ll stuff it with gold

Oh you poor devil look up if you will

The city of God is there on the hill.

Across the album, Dylan delivers his lyrics with a notable melodicism. “My Own Version of You” finds him employing a sing-song delivery to invite an unknown other to what sounds like a terrific bar:

I’ll play every number that I can play

I’ll see you maybe on judgment day

After midnight if you still wanna meet

I’ll be in Black Horse Tavern on Armageddon Street. “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” is as pure a love song as Dylan’s ever written (with apologies to “Forever Young”): I saw the first fall of snow I saw the flowers come and go

I don’t think anyone else ever knew

I made up my mind to give myself to you.

Need more proof that “I’ve Made Up My Mind … “is among Dylan’s best love songs?

If I had the wings of a snow white dove

I’d preach the gospel, the gospel of love

A love so real, a love so true I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you. “Black Rider” alone contains more essential lyrics than most songwriters craft in a career:

Let me go through, open the door

My souls is distressed, my mind is at war

Don’t hug me, don’t flatter me, don’t turn on the charm

I’ll take a sword and hack off your arm. Face-first in burning embers, the mysterious journeyman in “Black Rider” is a menacing figure who seems to tail Dylan, and might or might not represent America itself:

Black rider, black rider you’ve seen it all

You’ve seen the great world and you’ve seen the small

You fell into the fire and you’re eating the flame

Better seal up your lips if you want to stay in the game. Mississippi blues guitarist Jimmy Reed is best known for writing the song “Bright Lights, Big City,” and “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” is one of two barroom blues numbers on “Rough and Rowdy Ways”:

“You won’t amount to much,” the people all said

‘Cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head

Never pandered, never acted proud

Never took off my shoes and threw them into the crowd The record’s loveliest song, “Mother of Muses” is a precisely rendered ode to the creative life.

Mother of Muses unleash your wrath

Things I can’t see, they’re blocking my path

Show me your wisdom, tell me my fate

Put me upright, make me walk straight. Elsewhere on “Mother of Muses,” Dylan pens a pair of couplets that seem to drift off the page:

Take me to the river, release your charms

Let me lay down a while in your sweet loving arms

Wake me, shake me, free me from sin

Make me invisible like the wind.

This image released by Columbia Records shows “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” by Bob Dylan.