Nick Cave says Bob Dylan’s Murder Most Foul is musicians most ‘daring’ song to date

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A song from the most recent studio album by Bob Dylan has been called his most “daring” work by Nick Cave.

The Bad Seeds frontman considers Murder Most Foul, the longest song Dylan has ever released, to be among the veteran performer’s best songs. The song was released ahead of Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan’s 2020 album, and received plenty of praise from Dylan’s peers at the time. One fan of the song was Cave, who shared his love for Dylan’s “seventeen-minute epic” in a post to The Red Hand Files. One fan had asked Cave: “Do you think that the new Bob Dylan song feels like a swan song? Do you think it is the last song we will hear from him?” Dylan has reportedly been back in the studio while on the Outlaw Music Festival show, though has yet to release new material.

The Mercy Seat and Wild God songwriter, who has epics of his own, shared his thoughts on Murder Most Foul, calling it the most daring song from Dylan’s discography. Cave wrote: “Many other people have also written in about Bob Dylan’s new song, Murder Most Foul — and the interest is justifiable. It is a perplexing but beautiful song and, like many people, I have been extremely moved by it.

“At the heart of this seventeen-minute epic is a terrible event, the assassination of JFK — a dark vortex that threatens to pull everything into it, just as it did in the USA back in 1963. Whirling around the incident mnDylan weaves a litany of loved things — music mostly — that reach into the darkness, in deliverance. As the song unfolds he throws down lifeline after lifeline, insistent and mantra-like, and we are lifted, at least momentarily, free of the event.

“Dylan’s relentless cascade of song references points to our potential as human beings to create beautiful things, even in the face of our own capacity for malevolence. Murder Most Foul reminds us that all is not lost, as the song itself becomes a lifeline thrown into our current predicament.

“The instrumentation is formless and fluid and very beautiful. Lyrically it has all the perverse daring and playfulness of many of Dylan’s great songs, but beyond that there is something within his voice that feels extraordinarily comforting, especially at this moment. It is as though it has travelled a great distance, through stretches of time, full of an earned integrity and stature that soothes in the way of a lullaby, a chant, or a prayer.

“As for whether this is the last time we will hear a new Bob Dylan song. I certainly hope not. But perhaps there is some wisdom in treating all songs, or for that matter, all experiences, with a certain care and reverence, as if encountering these things for the last time.”

Dylan would go on to attend a Wild God show Cave performed in 2024. The Mr. Tambourine Man songwriter took to Twitter and shared: “Saw Nick Cave in Paris recently at the Accor Arena and I was really struck by that song Joy where he sings ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now it’s the time for joy.’ I was thinking to myself, ‘yeah that’s about right.'”