"Murder Most Foul" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, the 10th and final track on his 39th studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). It was released as the album's lead single on March 27, 2020, through Columbia Records. The song addresses the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the wider context of American political and cultural history. Lasting 16 minutes, 56 seconds, it is the longest song he has ever released, eclipsing 1997's "Highlands" which runs for 16 minutes, 31 seconds.
In a statement released with the single, Dylan indicated that "Murder Most Foul" was a gift to fans for their support and loyalty over the years. The song's title comes from a line in Hamlet. In addition to members of Dylan's touring band, the song also features Fiona Apple and Alan Pasqua both playing piano.
The song was the first original music Dylan had released since 2012 and generated an enormous amount of commentary.
Background
Dylan began his career as a professional musician during the Kennedy administration and imagined having a humorous telephone conversation with the President in "I Shall Be Free", the closing song on his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Dylan told his early biographer Anthony Scaduto, however, that he was not particularly devastated by Kennedy's assassination:
Yet Scaduto countered that, despite Dylan's denial, In his highly controversial acceptance speech, given on December 13, 1963, an intoxicated Dylan admitted that he "saw some of myself" in Lee Harvey Oswald before he was booed and rushed from the stage. The speech was met with hysteria from the press, which led to Dylan issuing a written statement in which he clarified his comments without apologizing.
Composition and recording When asked by historian Douglas Brinkley in an interview that appeared in The New York Times on June 12, 2020, if he had wanted to write a song about John F. Kennedy "for a long time", Dylan replied, "I'm not aware of ever wanting to write a song about J.F.K." then reminded Brinkley that "Murder Most Foul" is about a crime, not a politician. When asked if he intended the song to express nostalgia, Dylan replied, "I don't think of 'Murder Most Foul' as a glorification of the past or some kind of send-off to a lost age. It speaks to me in the moment. It always did, especially when I was writing the lyrics out".
Dylan scholar and musicologist Eyolf Ostrem notes in an essay on his website that while the song may give a first impression of being musically "formless", it is actually "strictly structured". According to Ostrem, it consists of five "great verses", four of which end with the lyrical refrain of "murder most foul" and each of which consists of "2 - 6 smaller verses". Ostrem notes that the song brings to fruition a musical quest that Dylan has been on for the entire 21st century: It features an "extended refrain structure" that he first experimented with in 2003's "'Cross the Green Mountain", an epic song with no true musical refrain; "just occasional verses with a slightly different chord sequence, interspersed between the regular verses". Ostrem also cites the Modern Times songs "Workingman's Blues #2" and "Nettie Moore" as having a similar construction. "Murder Most Foul" is performed in the key of C major.
Fiona Apple and Alan Pasqua both recorded their piano parts for the song in a single day. Apple told Dylan she "was really insecure" about playing on the track but that Dylan "was really encouraging and nice. He was just like, 'You're not here to be perfect, you're here to be you. Pasqua said of the session in a 2020 interview: "I told Bob: 'This is like [John Coltrane's] A Love Supreme! He just kind of looked at me without saying anything, but it really is like A Love Supreme to me. 'Murder Most Foul' is so profound and I get a lot of enjoyment out of making music with him. He transcends any musical genre. It's not rock, or folk, or pop. It's just Bob, man". In 2021, Pasqua compared the final mix to "the early days of stereo" and clarified that Benmont Tench's organ is on the left channel, Apple's piano is in the middle and Pasqua's own piano is on the right.
Themes Some commentators have interpreted the song as Dylan asserting that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the result of a conspiracy of individuals and not Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Other critics, and some of Dylan's fellow artists, however, have said that, in spite of the specificity of many of the lyrics (e.g., "They blew off his head while he was still in the car"), "Murder Most Foul" ultimately seems to be less about the assassination of John F. Kennedy than the cathartic power of art in times of collective trauma. According to John Barry of the Poughkeepsie Journal, this made the song a particularly fitting release in the early days of lockdowns precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic: "Framing the lyrical narrative of 'Murder Most Foul' is the assassination of Kennedy, which is perhaps Dylan's reminder that we are turning the coronavirus corner right now and things will never be the same, just as the world turned a corner when Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22, 1963".
Dylan's fellow songwriter Nick Cave elaborated on the song's ability to provide comfort during the particular historical moment in which it was released: "Dylan's relentless cascade of song references points to our potential as human beings to create beautiful things, even in the face of our own capacity for malevolence. 'Murder Most Foul' reminds us that all is not lost, as the song itself becomes a lifeline thrown into our current predicament. The instrumentation is formless and fluid and very beautiful. Lyrically it has all the perverse daring and playfulness of many of Dylan's great songs, but beyond that there is something within his voice that feels extraordinarily comforting, especially at this moment. It is as though it has traveled a great distance, through stretches of time, full of an earned integrity and stature that soothes in the way of a lullaby, a chant, or a prayer".
Release
The song was released unexpectedly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic on March 27, 2020, on Dylan's YouTube channel. The video consists of the song playing in its entirety accompanied by the still image of a cropped, black-and-white photograph of Kennedy that had originally been taken by Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr.; the background behind Kennedy was tinted in sepia. Dylan issued a statement on his website and via social media on the day that the single premiered calling it "an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting". This spurred speculation that the recording may have been years old and perhaps even an outtake from his 2012 album Tempest. Fiona Apple later confirmed, however, that the song had in fact been recorded only one month previously, in February 2020.
"Murder Most Foul" received radio airplay in spite of its extreme length. In an interview with Billboard, Bruce Warren, program director of WXPN in Philadelphia, said, "It's an instant Dylan epic. We had no concerns about playing it at all". This sentiment was echoed by Jim McGuinn, program director at KCMP in Minneapolis, who said, "I wasn't concerned at all. Our audience expects a bit of the unexpected. It's a wild ride, with Bob backed by a simple, alternating chord pattern. And we're in Minnesota...he's our favorite son". Billboard noted that helping the song's cause was the "adult album alternative" radio format: "As non-commercial outlets, they don't need to worry about breaking for lengthy sets of ads, so even a song that runs over a quarter of an hour fits snugly into an almost nonstop musical flow".
Critical response and legacy National Public Radio (NPR) described the song as "unfold[ing] slowly over a delicate instrumental backing of violin, piano and hushed percussion. Dylan's vocal is rich and expressive as he veers between describing the assassination, the unfolding of the counterculture, and a roll call of musicians, movie lyrics and other pop culture references" and felt the song was "Dylan at his most incisive and cutting". NPR concluded that "Murder Most Foul" was "worth many repeated listens and will occupy any Dylanologist holed up at home". Ann Powers and Bob Boilen of NPR analysed the song and identified over 70 songs referenced in the work.
Writing in The Guardian, Ben Beaumont-Thomas felt that the song described Kennedy's assassination in "stark terms, imagining Kennedy being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb ... 'they blew off his head while he was still in the car / shot down like a dog in broad daylight and that Dylan created an "epic portrait of an America in decline ever since" with a form of salvation available in popular music with references to the Beatles, Woodstock and Altamont festivals, the rock-opera Tommy by the Who, Charlie Parker, Guitar Slim, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Warren Zevon, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Little Walter, Carl Wilson, Queen and others.
Jeff Slate, for NBC News wrote "It's also virtually devoid of melody, and unlike anything Dylan has ever released, with Dylan essentially delivering his spoken-word, stream of consciousness lyrics on top of a sparse accompaniment of piano, violin and light percussion." Rolling Stone Deputy Music Editor Simon Voznik-Levinson praised the release, stating the song "is really about the ways that music can comfort us in times of national trauma. [...] For those of us who often turn to Dylan's catalog for that very purpose, 'Murder Most Foul' has arrived at the right time." A brief review by Jesse Hassenger of The A.V. Club praised the combination of gritty vocals with haunting instrumentation.
Kevin Dettmar of The New Yorker was less enthusiastic, calling the song "weird" and the first half "disappointing", explaining that "all the clichés aren't adding up to much". Dettmar continued, however, in a more favorable tone, saying that after the first ten minutes "something amazing happens: Wolfman Jack shows up and starts to play tracks". He stated that the last seven minutes of the song closely resembles a playlist "from one of the Theme Time Radio Hour shows that Dylan hosted from 2006 to 2009." The second half of the song makes reference to Warren Smith's "Uranium Rock", a song Dylan used to cover in his live shows in the mid-1980s; Billy Joel; and the Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley" from 1958. Dettmar admired the "ecumenicism" of the playlist the song has become, mentioning the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Stan Getz, Patsy Cline, the Everly Brothers, John Lee Hooker, the Animals and the Who. He continued, "The song itself becomes self-referential by including itself in the body of American song by which American history has not only been created, but also preserved: Play 'Love Me or Leave Me', by the great Bud Powell; Play 'The Blood-Stained Banner', play 'Murder Most Foul'".
Salons David Masciotra wrote a long, positive review that included reaching out to author David Talbot, who has written about the American intelligence community as well as the Kennedy family. Craig Jenkins of Vulture wrote that the song "couldn't be more prescient" and stated that the song can be part of unifying Americans in a time of crisis.
While reviewing Rough and Rowdy Ways in his "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau said the track "sums up the musical grave-robbing Dylan has been transmuting into original art for 60 years now" while providing "an apt summum" to the album's "elegiac retrospective", "despite its excessive length and portentous isolation on the CD package". He concluded that, within the context of the album, it is "both an elegy for and a celebration of all the dark betrayals, stunted gains, enduring pleasures, and ecstatic releases of an American era Dylan has inflected as undeniably as any artist even if he doesn't understand it any better than you, me, or whoever killed imperfect vessel JFK".