All The Tired Horses/Alberta No. 1/I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know/Days Of 49/Early Mornin' Rain/In Search Of Little Sadie/Let It Be Me/Little Sadie/Woogie Boogie/Belle Isle/Living The Blues/Like A Rolling Stone/Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)Gotta Travel On/Blue Moon/The Boxer/The Mighty Quinn/Take Me As I Am/Take A Message To Mary/It Hurts Me Too/Minstrel Boy/She Belongs To Me/Wigwam/Alberta No. 2
After nearly a decade of critical acclaim Bob Dylan releases an album which the pundits can deride. The double LP Self Portrait comprises mainly embarrassing covers of folk rock contemporaries plus many uninspired original songs. (US:4 UK:1)
"This album ranges from the hideously schmaltzy to the pretty entertaining. It's not as bad as it's been made out to be, but isn't much good either. One can appreciate it on the level of Dylan wilfully alienating his devoted audience and laughing along with him."
"It's really three different discs crammed into one: a covers-oriented follow-up to Nashville Skyline, but with added schmaltz; a more casual affair recorded around the same time as New Morning, with Dylan in quite different voice; and a live album from his appearance at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival."
"Self Portrait largely shows Dylan as a fan of other songwriters, and gives you some insight into how these other artists blended into the Bob we all know. A deliberate and successful attempt to get away from Dylan as the voice of a generation, and while not especially profound, it is still engaging."
"Released as a double album, Self Portrait was condemned by both reviewers and fans, who were shocked that the spokesman of their generation had not lived up to their standards. But if a performer can release a record that is regarded as a pitiful disappointment after a decade of publicly embraced masterpieces, but with a grin on his face while doing it, it's not such a bad thing."
"This has been a notoriously despised Bob Dylan album, but I've enjoyed it, every time I've listened to it. It contains a great variety of material - live songs with The Band, studio tracks, alternative versions of a couple songs, lo-fi 'basement tapes', polished recordings, cover-songs (mostly) and originals. This is Bob Dylan in more laid-back, introspective, relaxed, musical, country-folk-pop style."
"It’s a mess, but it’s an interesting mess with speckles of brilliance and quality. Dylan tackles a variety of genres and mashes them together with no regard to sequencing."
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