Like a Rolling Stone

"Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by Bob Dylan, from the album Highway 61 Revisited. First issued in 1965, it represents, in its length (6 minutes), style and scoring, one of the most influential of Dylan's songs.

The lyrics take an unsympathetic tone to its 'female' victim (How does it feel/ how does it feel/ to be on your own...) which borders on misogyny; but this is moderated by the clear impression that the song, and its image of its subject's fall from grace and into isolation, are in part self-addressed. Some critics have also noted the disconnect between the lyrics and the comparably upbeat music. An alternative interpretation would have it that the subject of the song is Andy Warhol, whom Dylan supposedly disliked intensely.

In live performances in recent years the vitriol with which the refrain has traditionally been song has been recast by Dylan himself. While starting characteristically unsympathetic, as the song progresses, the narrator becomes more concerned and the last refrain become arguably celebratory. While Dylan first critisizes the subject and her preveleged upbringing, by the end she is left with "nothing" and "nothing to lose". She has escaped the "straight" life completely and is "invisible now [with] no secrets to conceal." In this final refrain, he asks how it now feels to be seperated from these obligations of the modern corporate world. (Cf. "twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift" from Subterranean Homesick Blues)

In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine created a list of the top 500 songs of all time. Like a Rolling Stone was #1 on this list. Following the publication of the Rolling Stone article, Columbia Records reported that song was almost canned because of its length and the company's fidelity to then mainstream genres like jazz and pop, amongst other reasons.