Street Legal
| Bob Dylan
Street Legal
Street-Legal is the 18th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on June 15, 1978 by Columbia Records. The album was a departure for Dylan, who uses a large pop-rock band including female backing vocalists.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
August 24, 1978. It saddens me that I can’t find it in my heart to agree with my colleague Dave Marsh that Bob Dylan‘s new record is a joke, or anyway a good one. Most of the stuff here is dead air, or close to it.
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Spectrum Culture
August 22, 2016. In fact, Street Legal is perhaps the most complex and mystifying entry in Dylan’s catalog, and thus ultimately one of the most rewarding – not to mention one of the most unabashedly tuneful.
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All Music
Street Legal becomes an interesting dichotomy, filled with songs that deserve close attention but recorded in arrangements that discourage such listening. As such, Street Legal is fascinating just for that reason -- in another setting, these are songs that would have been hailed as near-masterpieces, but covered in gloss, they seem strange.
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Ultimate Classic Rock
Street-Legal’ became his bestselling album ever in Britain, thanks to the single ‘Baby, Stop Crying.’
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STEREOGUM
September 12, 2012. This is deliberately Dylan's showbiz record. Having been a front-and-center observer of Neil Diamond's runaway success, and sharing the same management, Dylan delivers on Street Legal his own particularly demented notion of what a big Vegas run might sound like.
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Blog Critics
September 30, 2008. Street Legal had the unenviable task of following Blood On The Tracks and Desire, and while it does not measure up to these two classics, it is a very solid album. It would also mark the conclusion of a very creative phase of Dylan’s career as he would explore new directions with his next series of releases.
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Daily Vault
January 1, 2008. All in all, Street Legal is an overlooked gem in Bob Dylan’s body of work from the Seventies. Sure, it might not quite hit the rarefied heights of Blood On The Tracks or Desire, but there’s still more than enough good art to be found amongst its nine tracks to warrant greater attention from Dylan fans.
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The Cinch Review
August 21, 2011. Yet, I’ve always loved Street Legal. It was mixed muddily (I think it benefited more than most of Dylan’s other albums from latter-day remixing and remastering) but it has a bunch of great songs and the performances drive along with nice energy and spontaneity.
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itunes Apple Music
The second half of the ‘70s was a renaissance period for Dylan, and Street-Legal is no exception. He brings his poetic majesty to bear for waltz-time epic “No Time to Think,” and evokes the dark underbelly of international intrigue on the moody, mysterious “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power).” But the album expertly balances head and heart—. . . .
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The Current
September 11, 2017. Bob Dylan’s 18th studio album, Street-Legal, is a very different kind of Dylan record. Released against the ubiquitous pop and disco of 1978, Street-Legal borrows heavily from pop and soul, with a full band, saxophone and a trio of female backing vocalists on each track.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
There may be something brilliant about the lyrics that I'm not picking up on, but musically and performance-wise, there's not much to recommend this disc.
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Robert Christgau
Because he's too shrewd to put his heart into genuine corn, and because his idea of a tricky arrangement is to add horns or chicks to simplistic verse-and-chorus abcb structures, a joke is what it is. But since he still commands remnants of authority, the joke is sour indeed.
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Mark Prindle
And here we reach the beginning of a long, long period of underwhelming Dylan records. Street Legal just doesn't have very many good melodies. The music is bogged-down '70s crud and the female back-up vocals may well be the most irritating background voices ever etched on a cassette tape . . . .
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Rock And Roll Globe
June 15, 2018. While Street-Legal’s reputation is probably better now than it was, it still can’t be considered essential Dylan. Instead, it takes its place as a transitional effort, representing one of those periods of uncertainty that often precedes a new phase in Zimmy’s career.
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Untold Dylan
October 10,2014. The sort of results I get are similar in style (if not in elegance or content) to what Dylan reveals here. He is, to my mind, revealing snatches of consciousness related to all that has gone on in the past year – the tour, the difficulties with the band (which changed personnel many times) the divorce.. everything. It is as if he writing down little phrases and half lines and working them brilliantly into one narrative that flows below those major chords.
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George Starostin's Reviews
Some interesting melodies would have been appreciated as well - so far, for me this remains one of his most unmemorable and generic records. Some particular involvement, too - this is the first time that Bob does nothing but just pile up all his troubles and worries in front of us and say, 'So whaddaya think?'
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Adrian's Album Reviews
May 24, 2013. This album was recorded in between tours with a hurriedly assembled band. So, the sound is hardly as rich as 'Desire'. The songs are a step down in quality as well though. Nothing like 'Blood On The Tracks' here. Well, maybe a couple songs are worthy, cut from the same cloth. Not too much else though. And, another thing! This record seems to bear comparison with 'New Morning'. It shares gospel backing vocals for one. It shares a certain sense of murkiness.
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John McFerrin Music Reviews
With Street Legal, though, Dylan established for himself an artistic approach so drastically flawed that no real hope for an upside could exist (and sure enough, this would stick with him for years and years).
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The Daily Beast
May 24, 2016. A little funky, a little jazzy, and loaded with dense lyrics about sex, love, and the apocalypse, the unusual (for Dylan) album fell prey to muddied production. Two decades later, it got a proper remaster—the saxophone and back-up soul singers now sound clearer, etc.—and became a critical favorite upon second glance.
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SC Times
December 26, 2015. Here is the sound of Bob Dylan either at his highest heights or his lowest lows, but pushing forward regardless. It was the sound of the end of one era and the sound of a new one just beginning.
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