In getting ready for his function as Bob Dylan in A Full Unknown, Timothée Chalamet went above and past to seize the spirit of Dylan’s musicality. The actor discovered to play and sing over 40 Bob Dylan songs, perfecting Dylan’s early singing type in addition to his manner of taking part in guitar, harmonica, and piano. Chalamet acquired to know Dylan’s discography inside out, obsessively poring over the albums The Instances They Are A-Changin’ and Bringing It All Again Residence specifically. The latter LP is Chalamet’s favourite Dylan file, which can also be a well-liked alternative amongst longtime followers of the singer.
Timothée Chalamet’s favourite particular person Bob Dylan compositions are a little bit tougher to pin down, as the actor’s particular track tastes are extra eclectic than his basic choice for Dylan’s music from the interval wherein his portrayal of the singer-songwriter is about. However, a few of Chalamet’s finest awards season moments from 2024 and 2025 present definitive insights into which Dylan songs Chalamet loves probably the most. They span the whole thing of Bob Dylan’s first decade as a recording artist and embody some deeper cuts which might be usually ignored by extra informal Dylan followers.
6
“Music To Woody”
1962
Unsurprisingly, the track that produces one of the crucial highly effective moments in A Full Unknown is amongst Timothée Chalamet’s favourite Bob Dylan compositions. The film’s fictionalized model of Dylan’s first go to to Woody Guthrie’s room in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital sees Chalamet carry out a transferring rendition of “Music To Woody” to an viewers of Scoot McNairy’s Guthrie and Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger.
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Guthrie later provides his harmonica to Chalamet’s Dylan in recognition of the respect his protege has bestowed on him. “Music to Woody” is the earliest Bob Dylan composition included on one among Dylan’s studio albums, and it encapsulates the overwhelming affect that Guthrie’s music and private story had on the musician as a youngster. In an Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe, Timothée Chalamet known as it “one among my favourite Bob Dylan songs ever”.
The piece was the primary one Chalamet carried out whereas capturing A Full Unknown. The depth of performing a track that meant a lot to him took its emotional toll, with the actor admitting he “went residence and wept” after the shoot was accomplished.
5
“Tomorrow Is A Lengthy Time”
1963
“Tomorrow Is a Lengthy Time” doesn’t function in A Full Unknown, and is one among Bob Dylan’s lesser-known compositions from the Nineteen Sixties. A hidden gem that had already been bootlegged earlier than it mysteriously turned up on Dylan’s 1971 compilation album Best Hits Vol. II, the singer wrote the piece throughout his Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan days whereas pining for his absent girlfriend Suze Rotolo (named Sylvie Russo and performed by Elle Fanning in A Full Unknown). He performed it stay at New York’s City Corridor in 1963, which was the model of the track launched eight years later.
Every of the three Bob Dylan songs that Chalamet performed on SNL was particularly chosen by the actor due to his private attachment to them.
Timothée Chalamet carried out the ballad whereas on Saturday Night time Reside internet hosting duties on January 26, 2025, as one of many Dylan songs he counted amongst his favorites. Every of the three songs Chalamet performed on SNL was particularly chosen by the actor due to his private attachment to them.
4
“Outlaw Blues”
1965
The second of Chalamet’s three Dylan favorites that he carried out on SNL in chronological order of their launch dates is “Outlaw Blues”, a rollicking, uptempo electrical quantity from the actor’s favourite Bob Dylan album, Bringing It All Again Residence. Chalamet was clearly having a blast in his off-the-wall stay efficiency of the track, reflecting the spirit wherein it was initially recorded in January 1965. He’d already confirmed it as one among his favourite Dylan tracks a month earlier, in an interview with Uproxx.
“Outlaw Blues” lends itself to uncooked, hard-edged rock and roll, as The White Stripes proved with a stripped-back stay iteration of the monitor throughout their Elephant tour again in 2003. It’s an uncommon alternative for a favourite Bob Dylan track, nevertheless, which may have endeared Timothée Chalamet to a number of the musician’s followers.
3
“It’s Alright Ma (I’m Solely Bleeding)”
1965
Alternatively, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Solely Bleeding)”, additionally from the 1965 LP Bringing It All Again Residence, is a much more widespread favourite track amongst Bob Dylan followers. Broadly thought to be having one of many best lyrics in fashionable music historical past, the track accommodates a lot of Dylan’s most well-known poetic aphorisms, from “Cash doesn’t speak, it swears,” to “He not busy being born is busy dying.”
Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan is seen composing the latter line of the track in A Full Unknown, throughout a midnight go to to Joan Baez’s room in Lodge Chelsea. But the actor had already developed an obsession with the track lengthy earlier than capturing this scene, as he tweeted the identical aphorism with out context on Twitter (now X) again in August 2020.
2
“Ballad Of A Skinny Man”
1965
“Ballad of a Skinny Man” is one other Bob Dylan composition typically thought of to be a masterpiece. The track is the final word riposte to Dylan’s media acolytes and critics alike, and its snarling acidity is what first drew Timothée Chalamet into the world of Dylan’s music.
In his interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Chalamet described how the stay model of “Ballad of a Skinny Man” that options in Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan documentary film No Path Residence was his “manner in” to the whole sound palette required to carry out as Bob Dylan in A Full Unknown. The actor was apparently impressed with Dylan’s scathing angle in the direction of outsiders who didn’t get his artwork, too, and the musician’s insistence on letting his work converse for itself. Few, if any, Bob Dylan compositions epitomize this sentiment higher than “Ballad of a Skinny Man”.
1
“Three Angels”
1970
The lightest monitor amongst Timothée Chalamet’s favourite Bob Dylan songs, “Three Angels” options spoken-word verses over gently cascading guitar licks and organ chords, as a choir swells to a crescendo within the background. It’s the type of left-field choose we would anticipate from Chalamet, however he did it justice with a honest and barely bombastic efficiency of the track on SNL.
Out of all Chalamet’s decisions, this one demonstrates simply how a lot Bob Dylan the actor was listening to only the making of A Full Unknown. Not content material with absorbing the music of the early Dylan he was taking part in, he went even deeper into the artist’s again catalog and gave items of music that may in any other case have been forgotten by time their second within the limelight.
Sources: Apple Music; Uproxx
