Desire

Desire is the sixteenth studio album by Bob Dylan, released in January 1976 on Columbia Records and produced by Don DeVito. It is notable as the first Dylan album on which he shares songwriting credits throughout, with most tracks co-written with playwright Jacques Levy, who helped Dylan structure longer narrative material through a more conventionally dramatic compositional approach. Dylan and Levy co-wrote seven of the nine tracks, including 'Hurricane' (an eleven-minute account of the wrongful conviction of boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, which was released as a single before the album and reached the top thirty on the Billboard Hot 100 while also being cited as a factually problematic narrative by several critics) and 'Isis,' 'Romance in Durango,' and 'Joey' (a nine-minute portrait of mobster Joey Gallo). The album also features the violin of Scarlet Rivera (recruited when Dylan pulled over his car on a New York street having seen her carrying a violin case and asked her to play), whose performance gives the album a gypsy-folk-influenced sonic texture distinct from any previous Dylan album. Desire reached number one on the Billboard 200 and has been certified three-times platinum in the United States; it was released alongside the Rolling Thunder Revue tour and the feature film Renaldo and Clara, part of a period of intense creative activity that produced some of Dylan's most celebrated live work. The album demonstrates Dylan's consistent willingness to redefine his creative approach across decades, folk, rock, country, gospel, and now the mythological narrative balladry of Desire, as each new collaborator opened a different formal territory.