Lyrics Christian Music

Bob Dylan Lyrics Reveal Depression, 'Time Out of Mind'

Although he came just short of giving a clinical diagnosis of depression, Bradford told The Christian Post that his “medical finding” was the result of discovering that the album’s lyrics were “literally loaded with the strong language of depressive illness – symptoms of depression.”

Bradford said it was this depression that caused Dylan’s “creative lapse” between 1990 and 2001, in which the singer released only one album (“Time Out of Mind”) containing his own original material.

Templehouse Publishing asked Bradford, who also wrote “The Jesus Discovery,” to write the book on Dylan because of the author’s similar Jewish Christian background as that of the singer.

“When the album ‘Time Out of Mind’ was released, nobody knew that Dylan had been married as a Christian to a Christian, had a child, and then four years later got divorced,” Bradford said. “At the time, [the album] was regarded as being dark in content. Nobody took that further and asked why it was dark because nobody knew about the divorce.

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“When I went over the lyrics, looking for a Biblical perspective, I was struck by the number of references to symptoms of depression in the tracks on the album. Every single track has symptoms of depression written into it,” he said.

The highly private Dylan married his Gospel back-up singer, Carolyn Dennis, in 1986. It was his second marriage . She filed for divorce in 1990. The couple had a daughter, Gabrielle Desiree.

Music critiques during the time of the album’s release were unaware of Dylan’s personal family situation, Bradford said. It wasn’t until 2001, as the result of a journalist’s story, that the marriage and divorce were revealed.

During the interview with CP, Bradford gave the parts of song verses from “Time Out of Mind” that were examples of a depressive state:

"Insanity is smashing up against my soul..." (Highlands)

Bradford said that Dylan’s songs from the album make more sense once you know that they are being written by someone who was divorced.

“You can understand the lyrics on the songs of that album: ‘You left me standing in the doorway crying,’ ‘I don’t know how long I can go on like this,’ ‘Every day your memory grows dimmer. It doesn’t haunt me like it did before.’ Most of the songs relate to his marriage breakup. Every single song has at least one line, and some have many lines which elude to a depressed mood. The album title is not a coincidence either,” he continued.