Bob Dylan
Saved

Premise: this is not a review that strives to be objective, and it does not aim to become an entry in the Encyclopedia of Music. It's just a small and very personal consideration about Bob Dylan's album 'Saved' and its surroundings, certainly contrary to the common sentiment about the work in question.

In every discography, there are atypical albums, very particular, generally rejected by critics as incomplete, pretentious, minuscule compared to the artist's masterpieces, ultimately unsuccessful. Then it happens that, nobody knows quite how, the album in question comes into your possession, perhaps in its original form. And precisely for this reason, you decide to give it a listen. As the album plays, you realize you are not facing one of those records you would send into space or take to a deserted island. And maybe you discover around that it is even considered a poor album. And yet...

And yet, thank God we are not robots, and tastes are not yet homogenized and crushed by what the majority thinks. So, although 'Saved' is even inferior to its already maligned predecessor 'Slow Train Coming', I consider it an album with its own exotic charm, one of those that makes you wonder "how can someone produce an album like this??" and yet you keep listening to it. In fact, the choice to produce religious, almost preacher-like albums is so bizarre, anti-commercial, and crazy that I find it interesting. Doing something unpopular, ignoring what critics and the public will say, just to follow what you feel inside, I think is the most artistic thing there can be. An Artist, in my romantic conception, is someone who follows inspiration, who has an almost physical need to communicate something. Even at the cost of being misunderstood, stoned, and regardless of the "objective" quality of the work.

Whom would I recommend it to? Good question. I would suggest it to those who have a taste for risk, to those who are not afraid to waste time, and to those who do not live only for masterpieces, to those who like to discover some album forgotten in the mists of time and "adopt" it as one would a poor orphan crushed by a monumental discography. Among my favorite songs, I mention Covenant Woman and What Can I Do For You.

Rating it after what I've written is not easy. I'll give it a 3, like a marble balanced between the altar and the basket.