Saved released: June 19, 1980 BUY

Anyone hoping that Dylan’s Christian preoccupation was just a phase or a momentary blip on the screen would have been disappointed by this 1980 follow-up album. Savedis, if anything, an even stronger evangelical statement, less introspective than Slow Train Coming, with tracks like “Solid Rock,” and “Pressing On”. It is in its way one of Dylan’s least personal albums; perhaps after all the years of wrestling with his own persona, or with peoples’ perceptions of it, with his own sense of possibility and right and wrong, he was glad to point listeners to a Higher Authority. In a 1980 interview, he was quoted as saying, “I’m becoming less and less defined as Christ becomes more and more defined.” Throughout Saved, from his reading of the old gospel standard “A Satisfied Mind” (“it’s so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind”) to his own “Are You Ready” (“have I surrendered to the will of God, or am I still acting like the boss?”), one can feel a constant struggle with the sin of pride. An album with an absolutely uncompromising vision. A Satisfied Mind | listen | Saved | listen | Covenant Woman | listen | What Can I Do For You? | listen | Solid Rock | listen | Pressing On | listen | In the Garden | listen | Saving Grace | listen | Are You Ready? | listen |