Bob Dylan launches gentle acoustic ballad I Contain Multitudes

(Image credit: Dave J Hogan / Getty Images)

Bob Dylan has released a new song, I Contain Multitudes. Released without any accompanying information, it's the follow-up to Murder Most Foul, released three weeks ago and Dylan’s first original release since his 2012 album Tempest.

The only clues as to what Dylan might be planning are a tweet containing nothing but the hashtag #icontainmultitudes, and new header images on the singer's social media accounts.

The phrase "I contain multitudes" comes from the Walt Whitman poem Song of Myself, 51, which features the lines, "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself / I am large, I contain multitudes."

The song, a gentle acoustic number, also references David Bowie's All The Young Dudes, Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake, Anne Frank, Indiana Jones and the Rolling Stones.

Listen to Dylan’s I Contain Multitudes below.

Earlier this year, the first details about a new Dylan biopic came to light. The film has the working title of Going Electric and will focus on the singer/songwriter’s controversial transition from folk to rock in the mid-60s.

Deadline reported that Dylan is involved with the project alongside Searchlight Pictures and director James Mangold, with talks with actor Timothée Chalamet about the lead role taking place.

Chalamet was most recently featured in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and played Hal/King Henry V in Netflix movie The King.

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.