Consistently adrift is the nicest way to describe Bob Dylan’s studio output in the 1980s. After a religious trilogy which has fared better now than it did on release, Dylan shifted gear once more. Infidels is a slight improvement to his studio works of the time, but it all came crashing down with Empire Burlesque. Where Dylan had alienated listeners with his born-again efforts, he tried making peace with a Mark Knopfler-produced album. No luck there. Empire Burlesque is the sound of desperation. It lives or dies on that, still, as Dylan ditches what has guided him in the studio for decades, adapting to the times as though there is no other choice. His chase of contemporary sound seems like a terrible moment, but dig a little deeper, and it seems Dylan is very aware of the mess he is making, in the studio and on stage.
Empire Burlesque is leagues away from the quality of Blood on the Tracks and Highway 61 Revisited, that much is not surprising. The times had changed; Dylan had to find a new route through to a public obsessed with synth-pop, Culture Club, and grim-looking CGI. That domination in popular culture means there is little room for Dylan’s usual aesthetic, as evidenced by the sidelining of artists like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Artists who did make the plunge into the soft pop style which is heard on Empire Burlesque fared no better because they betrayed the fundamentals of their sound. Neil Young and Paul McCartney found that out, the latter with a string of success in the shallow likes of Tug of War and Pipes of Peace. The difference between the successes from McCartney in this period and the failures of Dylan is not so much in collaboration, but in positioning.
McCartney would work with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, two pop titans which had little similarity with The Beatles members’ own work. Dylan would stick to those who had a shared interest, a refined palette for musical choices, hence the appearance of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers on this album. This is a chance for Dylan to prove himself not as a contemporary voice, but a contemporary-sounding musician. Empire Burlesque often feels like a pastiche of the usual genre strokes heard in pop music at the time. It does not forgive the lacking production value or the overwhelming list of musicians cropping up here or there to play some minor part in songs which would do better without the excess. But Empire Burlesque was released in a time of excess, in a period where rolling up the sleeves of your static fabric blazer was a sign of individuality.
It seems strange to think Dylan would lapse into that look, not because he is incapable of making popular music but because he always prided himself on being an individualist. His trio of religious albums was made at a time when listeners were crying out for the hits. He would relent, eventually, and feed them back into his set, but his pursuit of rock in an ever-changing decade where vapid music-making was frequently misguided. The 1980s sound found on Empire Burlesque is a slump, a real drag of a moment which, if it were not for Knocked Out Loaded to follow, could easily be the lowest point of Dylan’s career. But even then, somehow, there are charms to be found throughout.
Part of that comes from identifying the songwriting skill Dylan displays even in these lowest moments. Brownsville Girl may salvage Knocked Out Loaded, but it is the double bill of Emotionally Yours and When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky which makes Empire Burlesque worth returning to. With this adaptation to the synth-pop style comes a passiveness from Dylan rarely heard before this. He speaks of having things to do, of searching for love, though he never sounds intensely interested in the specifics. Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love) makes good on the backing vocalists Dylan had employed during tours in the first half of the 1980s but the repetition, the tepid guitar work which sounds better suited to latter-day Talking Heads demos, is a disastrous choice. This is a frequent problem for Dylan on Empire Burlesque.
Surprising it may be to realise, but some of Dylan’s strongest writing in the 1980s can be found here, paired with some of his weakest instrumental parts. Seeing the Real You at Last is a classic live piece, but in listenable quality, sounds quite unlike its studio origins. Unconscious genius is what it is. Too thick in the grass, foraging for nuggets of synth and soft pop rock like his peers, Dylan loses the core of these songs to the messiness of the decade. He is not to be blamed for this, not entirely. The succession of instrumentalists coming and going leaves Empire Burlesque feeling imbalanced at the best of times. I’ll Remember You into Clean Cut Kid provides the sort of tonal whiplash usually reserved for a rusted theme park waltzer blaring disco fusion before switching off to some ill-fated MC.
In that chase of contemporary sound, though, Dylan shares his best asset as a performer. He is unafraid to step outside of his comfort zone and bounces back from these shortcomings quickly. Even in a spell of uninspired moments, the mid-80s to early 1990s the toughest listen in his discography to date, Dylan continued creating. Never Gonna Be the Same Again was a warning. Nothing would ever revert to the days of folk empowerment or bitter rock thrills. They were moments in time, fragments which we can return to time and again thanks to the ever-growing pile of bootlegs and soundboard recordings. Forty years on from its release and there is still the imbalance which defines Empire Burlesque as one of the very worst, yet one of the most interesting, releases in Dylan’s discography.
Despite the grating ’80s sound, there are moments of sincere inspiration to be found. The backing vocals and repetitive overlap Dylan provides on Never Gonna Be the Same Again is surprisingly delicate, while album closer Dark Eyes is a real step up in quality compared to the A-side selections. Part of the religious fury which guided Saved and Slow Train Coming can still be heard in the likes of Trust Yourself, and, ultimately, it marks an interesting moment in Dylan’s career, where the songwriter believed the route forward for his creative spells was in contemporary efforts. He would not have known it wasn’t had he not gone there, and this marks the only time Dylan would truly delve into the soft rock tone of the times. Listeners, too, can realise the mistake by listening to Empire Burlesque, which remains a fascinating release, albeit one of sparse qualities.
