Just for the record, Black Diamond Bay is the best song on the album and one of the best of Dylan's career.

I agree with your review. This album is an incredible work of art. This represents Dylan at all his greatest talent. The songs are lyrically beautiful. The melodies are complex and original. I loved every song.  The violin playing is so great. It makes the album a unique statement in his unbelievable career. I have enjoyed this album for almost 50 years and still find new things when I play it again. This is great music

Desire has long been my favourite Bob Dylan album, I think he was at his absolute peak during this time. This was the culmination of a great four album run - Planet Waves,
Before The Flood, Blood On The Tracks and then this masterpiece.

Desire is an extraordinary album.  Dylan's vocals are at their most powerful and intense, and the addition of Scarlet Rivera's Gypsy style violin and Emmylou Harris' vocals are a huge asset as well.  You have correctly identified the key themes of the album, and the overall storyline of it as well.  Dylan's fascination with outlaw figures has featured all through his career, and it's a theme that is woven all through the history of America in figures like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, Bonnie & Clyde, Dillinger, and so many others.  It's just as deeply woven in the history of Mexico, and so "Romance in Durango" fits in there perfectly.  That's another cultural link that has always rung true for Bob Dylan.  

"Oh, Sister" may have been directed at Joan Baez.  They were touring and performing together again after about a 10 year hiatus.  She certainly thought it was written to her, and she wrote a very angry "answer" to it in her own song "O Brother!"   The lyrics are pretty clear.

O Brother!

You've got eyes like Jesus
But you speak with a viper's tongue
We were just sitting around on earth
Where the hell did you come from?
With your lady dressed in deerskin
And an amazing way about her (obviously Sara)
When are you going to realize
That you just can't live without her?

Take it easy
Take it light
But take it

Your lady gets her power
From the goddess and the stars
You get yours from the trees and the brooks
And a little from life on Mars
And I've known you for a good long while
And would you kindly tell me, mister
How in the name of the Father and the Son
Did I come to be your sister?

Take it easy
Take it light
But take it

You've done dirt to lifelong friends
With little or no excuses
Who endowed you with the crown
To hand out these abuses?
Your lady knows about these things
But they don't put her under
Me, I know about them, too
And I react like thunder

Take it easy
Take it light
But take it

I know you are surrounded
By parasites and sycophants
When I come to see you
I dose up on coagulants
Because when you hurl that bowie knife
It's going to be when my back is turned
Doing some little deed for you
And baby, will I get burned

And I'll Take it easy
Take it light
But I'll take it

So little brother when you come
To knock on my door
I don't want to bring you down
But I just went through the floor
My love for you extends through life
And I don't want to waste it
But honey, what you've been dishing out
You'd never want to taste it
And if I had the nerve
To either risk it or to break it
I'd put our friendship on the line
And show you how to take it

Easy...
Light...
Would you take it?

I don't think Joan's ever sounded angrier than that in a song!  

Be that as it may, they did wonderful duets together in 1975 and '76, and the Rolling Thunder Revue was an artistic triumph for both of them.

His most overlooked masterpiece.

This has always been one of my favorite Dylan albums It was different than Blood on the tracks but a great follow up. The live songs from this album are incredible .

Think it’s important to remember that desire was recorded before the Rolling Thunder tour and only hurricane was re-recorded after the first leg—part of the reason it sounds so different. The live versions of many of these songs are some of his best too, especially abandoned love, shame it didn’t get on the album.

This album gave me the thirst for adventure and seeing everything in life with wonderous eyes, seeking challenge in every little thing I do. Best of Dylan's work in my opinion

My favorite Dylan album.

My FAV DYLAN Album

24/02/2025 a brilliant album and I was never a fan of Dylan until I heard blood on the  Tracks, a magical period in his career

One of those little top-loading battery-powered cassette players. On the front seat of a beat-up old Holden. Somewhere around Ballina on the Pacific Highway, New South Wales. On the way to Byron Bay. I t h i n k actually my school holidays in January, 76 -- so within weeks of its release. Certainly today the memory is splendidly clear. Those born in decades since can't really understand a pivotal reality: There just was much less music! No Walkmans, no FM radio, no massive home stereo systems.                   I was being bombarded with influences -- half the teenagers in my home town got The Dark Side of The Moon for Christmas in 1973. Led Zepplen was 'incoming.' But to get a sense of the change, let's jump back to Bobby Vee and Rubber Ball. The background vocalists croon 'Bouncey bouncey.' This was the sort of music I'd mostly heard until then. Your Mum and Dad played it on the old-fashioned record player in the living room. And Peter, Paul, and Mary. And the theme song from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. So songs like Black Diamond Bay and Isis and Sara were of a class of music entirely new to me.

Love this album❤

❤❤ Yes wonderfull album Desire have too 🕯🍀

Desire is a masterpiece

Suggestion: a video on Time Out Of Mind, and how that album saved Dylan's career.

Such a great review, love the record,didn't know EmmyLou was on there

Fantastic video, there's not a wasted second

On one more cup of coffee I think what accounts for the sumptuously exotic flavor of the song are the chords and the melody.  They sound Arabic to me.

goated video.