Bob Dylan wrote the perfect swansong album, he is right to tour it further

Bob Dylan has been known to make fans wait a while. It took him eight years after Tempest to release a new album of original material. That album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, is the perfect end to a career still going. Those who view Dylan as a musical enigma will like this. Dylan has capped his career off perfectly in the studio, and yet six years on from the release of Rough and Rowdy Ways, he maintains an on-stage presence that most modern-day artists would struggle to match. Should he release an album after this, then more power to him. But we can discredit it as being anything more than an epilogue. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a fitting last mark, and uncomfortable it may be to admit there is an end of the line to come, it would be a perfect place for the veteran songwriter to stop. He turns eighty-five on May 24, and he has earned the right to keep on. 

Rough and Rowdy Ways formed the base of Dylan’s tour from 2021 to 2026. We can discount 2026 somewhat, given the change Dylan made early in the tour. Fans were quick to notice the Rough and Rowdy Ways: Worldwide Tour advertisements had been dropped. Instead, a general Spring 2026 image is listed on Dylan’s site, with North American shows set to run long into August. It is no surprise to those who have followed Dylan post-Coronavirus lockdowns. He has performed a significant number of shows over the last five years, and almost every one of them featured the same setlist. Those in Europe will feel a tad shortchanged when they see the likes of Masters of War, Mr. Tambourine Man, and Love Sick performed to Outlaw Music Festival crowds, but they would do right to remember just what Dylan is doing on stage when he comes to town.  

Having seen Dylan four times on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour from 2022 to 2025 (a drop in the ocean compared to dedicated fans – one attendee at the Hull show in 2022 claimed she had tickets to every show on the European tour), it is somewhat clearer that he intends this to be his swansong. Whether it actually ends up being that is subject to change. Willie Nelson has a new album out in May and has shown no sign of stopping. Bruce Springsteen, too, has confirmed he will go “until the wheels fall off.” Dylan seems to tour out of habit, and it’s a habit that benefits attendees. The work is never done, the song is never finished; that has been the point of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. Now that it has ended, Dylan can relax a little and feed in some lesser-known material from Oh Mercy and preserve the favourites of his latest studio album. It is what Spring 2026 has offered so far.  

But it is much more than that. There is a need, now more than ever, for there to be no loose ends. Paul McCartney is set to release The Boys of Dungeon Lane, an album that, too, feels like a swansong. Leonard Cohen and David Bowie both marked their passings with an album that touched on finality and mortality – something Rough and Rowdy Ways is keen to showcase too. Anything more from Dylan on those topics, fitting given where he finds himself at this moment in time (career-wise, that is), would be surplus to requirement. It is too much of a good thing to want more and more from a songwriter who has openly admitted in the last twenty years that he cannot write like he used to. That is not a failing at all, and Dylan has adapted to that by keeping a rigid setlist for the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. A rare cover of The Pogues to cap off the 2025 European tour is about all the change he needs to make to the setlist.  

Change comes from elsewhere, anyway, and it’s why Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways effort feels like a sincere swansong, a final moment he can be proud to end his studio career with. There is no shortage of instrumental avenues to be taken with these songs. They lend themselves to improvisation, and with Dylan replacing his baby grand piano with an electric keyboard on this recent tour, his search for new meaning in old material continues. He has walked that path for decades, but now he gets to work with what very well could be his final album. Some will be rightly delighted by the inclusion of All Along the Watchtower and Man in the Long Black Coat on this latest tour – they serve the same purpose as Desolation Row and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue did last year. They are there to support the search for meaning in mortality; they are selected as songs to bridge the gap between Rough and Rowdy Ways material.  

It’s no mistake that Dylan’s latest album still dominates the setlist. It has a rightful place on stage and Dylan has shown there is a depth to this material he has yet to fully explore. Until he has cracked that, fans cannot expect him to roll out a new studio album. Maybe he won’t. Those eight years between Tempest and Rough and Rowdy Ways were not barren, but filled with cover tracks as Dylan worked out the tempo, tone, and volume of what he wanted when producing that next set of originals. He is trialling the meaning and message in public, and that much is lost in the allure and grandeur of seeing the legend perform. It’s easy to lose yourself in the moment, as all fans should, but if you take a step back you can see that Dylan, whose Never Ending Tour has, indeed, never ended, will have its final curtain call. We are closer to the end than the start, and whether that weighs on the veteran performer is unknowable.  

But we can speculate on what it means, what Rough and Rowdy Ways and Dylan are set to investigate over these next few months, hopefully years. Take a song like I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You. From the title alone, fans can assume the multitude of reasons inspiring the song. What is Dylan giving himself up to? There has only been one convincing answer. He has toured and toured, searching for new ways into his oldest works. It has been a staggering watch, but to the man onstage, it is more than habit. It has to be. There is enjoyment for touring and then there is a need for it, a necessity to improving the art already released. Dylan is performing far more than his contemporaries and is putting new artists on a pedestal all at once. He has given himself up to touring, and we should be thankful that he continues to do so, but it acts as a warning to those who find themselves on the road, be it for music or other reasons.  

Much can be said about the reflection Dylan put out on Rough and Rowdy Ways. What pierces through most clearly of all, though, is that embrace of the end. Not death, that isn’t the point, despite the morality of it all, but the desire to work with purpose and to continue for as long as the body may allow. Dylan is at the midway point of his 80s, and we may be taking for granted his want and need to perform. He could pull the plug on these shows before the end of the year, or he could carry on and perform for another decade. Either way, there is surprise at the heart of it, and it is steered by his most recent, and likely final, studio album.

You can read this feature, as well as other opinion pieces about Bob Dylan, on Cult Following’s Substack.