Bob Dylan Essentials Breaks Billboard 200 after Nobel Prize

By Stephen Pate – The Essential Bob Dylan 2014 jumped onto the Billboard 200 chart at #76 after Dylan’s Nobel Prize win.

The “best-of” double CD is billed as the “2014 best of compilation. Definitive, career-spanning and comprehensive, The ESSENTIAL series features the biggest hits and best-loved songs from the most famous names in music history!”

When the Nobel Awards committee awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, said “He can be read and should be read, and is a great poet in the English tradition”

She recommended “Blonde on Blonde” as the starting point for people not acquainted with Bob Dylan. Apparently new and old Dylan fans ignored that advice and bought the 2014 greatest hits CD in droves.

Dylan, The Essential Bob Dylan – No. 76 — Following news of Bob Dylan’s selection as the Nobel Prize winner in literature (Oct. 13), the legend’s 2014 best-of set, The Essential Bob Dylan, arrives at No. 76 with 7,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Oct. 20, according to Nielsen Music. It’s Dylan’s 68^thcharting album on the tally, and second in 2016, following the new studio effort Fallen Angels (which debuted and peaked at No. 7 in June). Billboard November  2016

A note of caution – this is the 2014 revision not the 2010 release of Dylan Essentials. It has newer material. Here’s the song list which is a good representation of Dylan’s best.

Disc: 1
1. Blowin’ In the Wind
2. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
3. The Times They Are A-Changin’
4. It Ain’t Me Babe
5. Maggie’s Farm
6. Mr. Tambourine Man
7. Subterranean Homesick Blues
8. Like a Rolling Stone
9. Positively 4th Street
10. Just Like a Woman
11. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
12. All Along the Watchtower
13. Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
14. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
15. Lay, Lady, Lay
16. If Not for You

Disc: 2
1. I Shall Be Released
2. You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
3. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
4. Forever Young
5. Tangled up in Blue
6. Hurricane
7. Ring Them Bells
8. Gotta Serve Somebody
9. Jokerman
10. Not Dark Yet
11. Things Have Changed
12. Make You Feel My Love
13. Mississippi
14. Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
15. Duquesne Whistle
16. When the Deal Goes Down

For more Bob Dylan, see Wikipedia.