"I Contain Multitudes" is a song by the American singer-songwriter

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...

, the opening track on his 39th studio album, '' Rough and Rowdy Ways'' (2020). It was released as the album's second single on April 17, 2020, through

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

. The title of the song is taken from Section 51 of the poem " Song of Myself" by

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...

. The song was released, unannounced, less than a month after Dylan's previous single, " Murder Most Foul". The two singles were the first original material released by Dylan since his 2012 album '' Tempest''. "I Contain Multitudes" reached number 5 on ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

''s Rock Digital Song Sales chart.

Background and themes

Dylan has long been fascinated by the concept of the multiplicity of the self, evident in everything from his fondness for

Arthur Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he s ...

's phrase "Je est un autre" ("I is another"), which he said caused bells to go off when he first read it in the 1960s, to the lyrics of his

Rastafari Rastafari is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by Religious studies, scholars of religion. There is no central authori ...

-influenced 1983 song " I and I". In an interview to promote ''Time Out of Mind'' in 1997, Dylan said, "I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time. It doesn't even matter to me". A paraphrase of this last quote is spoken by

Richard Gere Richard Tiffany Gere ( ; born August 31, 1949) is an American actor. He began appearing in films in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in ''Looking for Mr. Goodbar (film), Looking for Mr. Goodbar'' (1977) and a starring role in ''Days of Hea ...

Billy the Kid Henry McCarty (September 17 or November 23, 1859July 14, 1881), alias William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, was an American outlaw and gunfighter of the Old West who was linked to nine murders: four for which he was solely res ...

character via voice-over narration in

Todd Haynes Todd Haynes (; born January 2, 1961) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurred gender ...

' unconventional 2007 biopic ''

I'm Not There ''I'm Not There'' is a 2007 musical drama film directed by Todd Haynes, who co-wrote the screenplay with Oren Moverman, based on a story by Haynes. An experimental biographical film, it is inspired by the life and music of American singer-so ...

'' (which features the subtitle "Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan" and takes Dylan's constantly-changing persona explicitly as its subject). Dylan's chameleon-like nature had caused critics to use

's line "I contain multitudes" in relation to him long before he ever wrote a song by that title. Dylan himself quoted the line in an interview for the 2019 documentary '' Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese''.

Lyrics

When asked about writing the song by historian

Douglas Brinkley Douglas Brinkley (born December 14, 1960) is an American author, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities, and professor of history at Rice University. Brinkley is a history commentator for CNN, Presidential Historian for the New York Historica ...

for an interview in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' to promote the release of '' Rough and Rowdy Ways'', Dylan noted that he "didn't really have to grapple much. It's the kind of thing where you pile up stream-of-consciousness verses and then leave it alone and come pull things out. In that particular song, the last few verses came first. So that's where the song was going all along. Obviously, the catalyst for the song is the title line. It's one of those where you write it on instinct. Kind of in a trance state. Most of my recent songs are like that. The lyrics are the real thing, tangible, they're not metaphors". Brinkley also asked Dylan about the surprising inclusion of

Anne Frank Annelies Marie Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – February or March 1945)Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new li ...

's name in the song, to which Dylan responded that Frank's story was "profound" before adding: "You could just as well ask, 'What made you decide to include

Indiana Jones ''Indiana Jones'' is an American media franchise consisting of five films and a prequel television series, along with games, comics, and tie-in novels, that depicts the adventures of Indiana Jones (character), Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, ...

or the

Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...

'. The names themselves are not solitary. It's the combination of them that adds up to something more than their singular parts. To go too much into detail is irrelevant. The song is like a painting, you can't see it all at once if you're standing too close. The individual pieces are just part of a whole...Somewhere in the universe those three names must have paid a price for what they represent and they're locked together. And I can hardly explain that. Why or where or how, but those are the facts".

Music

"I Contain Multitudes" is performed in the key of C major. Critics noted upon release of the single that there is a certain continuity when it is listened to alongside Dylan's previous single, " Murder Most Foul", which is performed in the same key (and that '' Rough and Rowdy Ways'' has a circular structure when listened to on repeat since they are the first and last tracks on the album, respectively). In all, there are six verses and two bridges, the latter of which are, according to Robert Dye in ''

American Songwriter ''American Songwriter'' is a bimonthly magazine covering songwriting. Established in 1984, it features interviews, songwriting tips, news, reviews and lyric contest. The magazine is based in Nashville, Tennessee. History The ''American Songwri ...

'', "sung over a descending six-minor walkdown, contrasting with the dreamy feel of the verses and creating tension". The song has a slow tempo and a sparse arrangement featuring multiple acoustic guitars, a pedal steel guitar and an upright bass played with a bow. It is notable for being the only song on ''Rough and Rowdy Ways'' to feature no percussion. Also similar to "Murder Most Foul" is Dylan's vocal performance, which Tony Attwood describes as " alkinga fine line between talking and singing". When Dylan played

Lotte Lenya Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is be ...

's version of

Kurt Weill Kurt Julian Weill (; ; March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for hi ...

and

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

's " Alabama Song" on the "Whiskey" episode of '' Theme Time Radio Hour'', first broadcast in September 2020, he characterized her vocal technique as "

sprechstimme (, "spoken singing") and (, "spoken voice"), more commonly known as speak-singing in English, are expressionist musical vocal techniques between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, is directly related to the operatic re ...

", meaning half-spoken/half-sung, before humorously adding, "I use that sometimes myself".

Release

The song was released unexpectedly on Dylan's

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

channel on April 17, 2020, three weeks to the day after the stealth release of Dylan's previous single " Murder Most Foul". The YouTube video consists of the song accompanied by a still photograph of Dylan playing live in

Salzburg Salzburg is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach, Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Alps moun ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

that had been taken by Italian Dylan fan Andrea Orlandi in 1996 (a photograph that was also later included in one of the inner sleeves of the '' Rough and Rowdy Ways'' vinyl release). The single's release had been teased several hours before the song's premiere by a status update on Dylan's official

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

account that featured the song title as a hashtag: #IContainMultitudes.

Critical reception

While reviewing '' Rough and Rowdy Ways'' in his "Consumer Guide" column,

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...

said the track "provides exactly the right thematic sendoff" within the context of the album's "elegiac retrospective". Mark Beaumont of ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "Rock music, rock inkie", the ''NME'' would be ...

'' called it a "sanguine personal exposé" and "a kind of literary folk '

My Way "My Way" is Paul Anka's English-language lyrical adaptation of the French song " Comme d'habitude", released by Frank Sinatra in 1969. The original song was written by Jacques Revaux, Gilles Thibaut, and Claude François, and was first recor ...

', a porch chair portrait of a life fully lived", in which Dylan "peels away the details of his journey with the grace and conciliation of a master making his peace". Several critics have commented on Dylan's surprising use of humor in the song, including

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

's Lauren Onkey who noted that the lyrics contain "a list of sometimes funny (we often forget that Dylan is funny) and preposterous brags of the singer's power and prowess that evoke the blues", and ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

'''s Patrick Ryan who, in an article about the "Best Songs of 2020", referred to it as both "cheeky" and "quietly heartbreaking". Simon Vozick-Levinson, writing in a ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

'' article where the song placed 13th on a list of "The 25 Best Bob Dylan songs of the 21st Century", noted that it functions as a "bookend of sorts" to " Murder Most Foul" in that, in both, "Dylan seems to be considering his place in the constellation of great musicians and artists through the ages". The ''Sydney Morning Herald'' named "I Contain Multitudes" one of the "Top five Bob Dylan songs" in a 2021 article, calling it a "paean to unassailable self-knowledge

hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...

is sung like a man at peace with every detail". ''Spectrum Culture'' included the song on a list of "Bob Dylan's 20 Best Songs of the '10s and Beyond".

The Pretenders The Pretenders are a British rock band formed in March 1978. The original band consisted of founder and main songwriter Chrissie Hynde (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), James Honeyman-Scott (lead guitar, backing vocals, keyboards), Pete Farndon (ba ...

' lead singer Chrissie Hynde told ''

'' that she found the song "fucking devastating" and that its release, along with the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

lockdown, inspired her to finally realize her ambition of recording a Dylan covers album.

Robert Plant Robert Anthony Plant (born 20 August 1948) is an English singer and songwriter. He was the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band Led Zeppelin from its founding in 1968 until their breakup in 1980. Since then, he has had a successful solo ca ...

claimed that, upon first hearing it, he "just went, 'This is the story of all of our lives! Except he's taken the bends in a totally different way, the curves'", and claimed that being able to "voice somebody else's condition" in a similar fashion was more than he could imagine as a lyricist. Actress/singer Rita Wilson included the song on a

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

playlist of her favorite romantic Bob Dylan songs when promoting her 2020 single "I Wanna Kiss Bob Dylan".

Cultural references

As with " Murder Most Foul", "I Contain Multitudes" contains many references to other artists and works of art over the past few centuries. The line "I rollick and I frolic with all the young dudes...I contain multitudes", for example, is a reference to

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...

's song "

All the Young Dudes "All the Young Dudes" is a song written by English singer-songwriter David Bowie, originally recorded and released as a single by the English rock band Mott the Hoople in 1972 by Columbia Records. Bowie produced the song, which he had given t ...

", which became a hit for Mott the Hoople in 1972. In an article about "I Contain Multitudes" at ''Forward'', Seth Rogovoy suggested this particular line "could be read as a similar nod toward queerness contained in the Bowie-penned original". The song also contains numerous references to Irish poetry and songs, in particular the work of

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the ...

, Antoine Ó Raifteiri and the song " Danny Boy". Although allusions to Irish poetry and song are nothing new in Dylan's work, some have speculated that these particular references may have been inspired by an evening Dylan spent in the company of fellow songwriter

Shane MacGowan Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan (25 December 195730 November 2023) was a British-born Irish singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of Celtic punk band the Pogues. He won acclaim for his lyrics, whic ...

in Dublin while on tour in 2017. The line "I live on a boulevard of crime" is a reference to the setting of Marcel Carne's 1945 film ''

Children of Paradise ''Children of Paradise'' (, ) is a two-part French romantic drama film by Marcel Carné, produced under war conditions in 1943, 1944, and early 1945 in both Vichy France and Occupied France. Set in the theatrical world of 1830s Paris, it tell ...

'', one of Dylan's all-time favorite movies. ''Children of Paradise'' was an influence on Dylan's

Rolling Thunder Revue The Rolling Thunder Revue was a 1975–76 concert tour by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan with numerous musicians and collaborators. The purpose of the tour was to allow Dylan, who was a major recording artist and concert performer, to play ...

tour in 1975 and his 1978 film ''

Renaldo and Clara ''Renaldo and Clara'' is a 1978 American film directed by Bob Dylan and starring Bob Dylan, Sara Dylan and Joan Baez. Written by Dylan and Sam Shepard, the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, a ...

'', and he previously quoted a line from it ("Love is so simple") in the '' Blood on the Tracks'' song " You're a Big Girl Now". The line "I carry four pistols and two large knives" is a reference to Ward Will Lamon, an overarmed bodyguard who accompanied

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...

to his inauguration, as described in

Shelby Foote Shelby Dade Foote Jr. (November 17, 1916 – June 27, 2005) was an American writer, historian and journalist. Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of ''The Civil War: A Narrative'', a three- ...

's '' The Civil War: A Narrative''. This is the first of six references to U.S. Presidents on '' Rough and Rowdy Ways'' (the other five of which come in the album's final two songs: " Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" and "Murder Most Foul").

Live performances

"I Contain Multitudes" received its live debut at the Riverside Theater in

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

on November 2, 2021, the first concert of Dylan's Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour. According to Dylan's official website, he has performed the song in concert 250 times as of April 2025.

Charts

Accolades

Cover versions

The song was covered by Australian singer/songwriter Emma Swift on her 2020 album '' Blonde on the Tracks''. Swift also played the song at a show in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

that was live streamed on

in the summer of 2020. Norwegian pop singer

Sondre Lerche Sondre Lerche (; born 5 September 1982) is a Norwegian singer, songwriter, musician and actor. His discography includes ten studio albums and multiple EPs. Early life Growing up in a suburb of Bergen, Lerche was heavily influenced by 1980s pop. ...

released a cover as a Christmas single on December 20, 2020, via ''

Stereogum ''Stereogum'' is a daily Internet publication that focuses on music news, reviews, interviews, and commentary. The site was created in January 2002 by Scott Lapatine. ''Stereogum'' was one of the first MP3 blogs and has received several awar ...

''.

References

External links

*
Lyrics
at Bob Dylan's official site
Chords
at Dylanchords {{authority control 2020 singles 2020 songs Bob Dylan songs Columbia Records singles Songs written by Bob Dylan