I Contain Multitudes

I Contain Multitudes is the 1st track off of Bob Dylan's 39th studio album Rough and Rowdy Ways and the second single released for it. The title is based off of Section 51 of Walt Whitman's magnum opus "Song of Myself". It was teased by the Bob Dylan Twitter account the day before release, and it released at midnight April 17, 2020. It followed the quiet release of "Murder Most Foul" 30 days before.

Background
On March 27, 2020, Dylan quietly released "Murder Most Foul", his first original song since 2012. Following the massive success of the single, Dylan planned to release another single from the yet-to-be-announced album. In the morning of April 16, 2020, Dylan tweeted "#IContainMultitudes" and then nothing else. That night, he tweeted the first bridge of the song with all the nouns hashtagged, and a link to the song. The lyrics of the song don't mean anything, Dylan said in an interview with The New York Times that the lyrics were a 'stream of conciousness thing'. A lyric comparing Dylan to Anne Frank and then Indiana Jones caused a minor controversy, but was forgotten about after a few days.

Music
The only instruments in the song are electric guitars played by Blake Mills and Dylan, playing a progression in C major. The bridge section has a driving rhythm to it, but the verses have the guitars playing in a trance-like state, like a field of flowers instead of a raucous house of blues. Like "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You" and "Mother of Muses", the song's instrumentation is peaceful in calm, in directly contrast to tracks like "False Prophet" and "Crossing the Rubicon".

The song is in C Major.

Personnel

 * Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar
 * Blake Mills – guitar