Bob Dylan becomes first artist to have top 40 album in every decade since 1960s (2024)

Bob Dylan is the first artist to have a top 40 album on the US charts in every decade since the 1960s.

More than 50 years after he made his debut in the Billboard 200 chart, Dylan’s new studio album Rough and Rowdy Ways, which was released on 19 June, debuted at the number two spot.

Marking the musician’s highest charting album in over a decade, the record, which is his first to feature original songs in eight years, also makes Dylan the first artist to have scored an album in the top 40 in every decade from the 1960s to the 2020s.

The “Like a Rolling Stone” singer made his debut in the Billboard album charts in 1963 with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and went on to score five number one albums over the years, his most recent being with Together Through Life in 2009.

Rough and Rowdy Ways reached number one in the UK charts, making Dylan, 79, the oldest artist to reach the top spot with an album of new material.

The title was previously held by Paul Simon, who was 74 when his album Stranger To Stranger went to number one in 2016.

The Independent’s Helen Brown gave Rough and Rowdy Ways a four-star review, writing: “[Dylan’s] first new material since 2012’s ‘Tempest’ is a soothing fit for the lockdown mood in which time and meaning feel strangely stretched and untethered.”