Released January 1975 Length 2:54 Writer(s) Bob Dylan | Genre Folk rock Label Columbia | |
Recorded December 30, 1974 at Sound 80 in Minneapolis, Minnesota | ||
"You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" is a song written, performed and recorded by Bob Dylan. The Daily Telegraph described it as "Dylan's most fully realised masterpiece, crammed with lyrical blood and thunder and piercing observations."
It appeared on Dylan's album Blood on the Tracks, released in January 1975. According to the Telegraph the song is the album's "simplest, breeziest song – yet it remains heartbreaking in its almost carefree surrender to the inevitability of romantic pain." Dylan has not performed the song since 1976.
Miley Cyrus and Johnzo West covered the song for Amnesty International on Chimes of Freedom: Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International, a charity compilation album released on January 24, 2012 featuring Bob Dylan covers. The album debuted in the U.S at number 11 on the Billboard 200, with 22,000 copies sold.
Lyrics
The song's lyrics have brought forth multiple interpretations—from the idea that they are confessional, to Dylan's claims that the album was inspired by literature, to the lyrics being called Dylan's most masterfully written love poem. Many believe the song describes Dylan's relationship issues with his wife during the time when they were separated. Additionally, Ellen Bernstein, a girlfriend of Dylan's in 1974 while he was separated from his wife, claims that the song was about their relationship.
However in interviews Dylan claimed the song was inspired by literature. Rolling Stone reported that in Dylan's memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, "Dylan was assumed to be referring to Blood on the Tracks when he wrote: “I would even record an entire album based on Chekhov short stories. Critics thought it was autobiographical – that was fine.”
In a Rolling Stone article, Jim James described the song as the "essence of love. He's describing everything so viscerally. I can almost smell the trees and different people I've known over the years, the flowers, the sunlight – the way things look when you're falling in love and how that turns in on itself when you have to leave or move on or life changes you or changes the other person. He's reflecting on it in such a beautiful way, saying that person will always be a part of him. He'll see her everywhere."