Empire Burlesque (1985)

1. Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)
2. Seeing the Real You at Last
3. I'll Remember You
4. Clean Cut Kid
5. Never Gonna Be the Same Again
6. Trust Yourself
7. Emotionally Yours
8. When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky
9. Somethng Burning, Baby
10. Dark Eyes

Notes and Reviews

The musicians:


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Reviews:

From The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray:

"Empire Burlesque [1985] Dylan was truly floundering in this period (it was the year of his
appearance on LIVE AID, at which he finally blew his automatic right to headline at any
international gathering of superstars), and though this studio album has a cohesion lacking in those either
side of it—Infidels and Knocked Out Loaded—it features undistinguished pop songs, most of
which anyone could have written, and an overwrought production made worse by a horrible,
supposedly modish re-mix by the graceless ARTHUR BAKER. Here is the shameful spectacle of a man whose
early work avoids adroitly every pop dissimulation in work of unsurpassed, pioneering clarity of individual
vision and vocal richness, now mewling his thin vocal way through a thick murk of formulaic
riffs, licks and echo-laden AOR noises devised with a desperate eye on rock-radio formats. Here is the
artist whose mature intelligence revolutionised the love song in popular music, now reduced to
lines like ‘You to me were true / You to me were the best’ and titles like ‘Emotionally Yours’. Ugh.
Even the cover photograph signals how adrift the artist of Empire Burlesque is: it shows Dylan the perplexed
fashion-victim in Bruce Willis jacket. Early Bob Dylan would have found the whole thing contemptible."

Best Song:
"Dark Eyes"
According to Alias

Favorite Lyric:
"A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes"
According to Alias