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Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ video will waste your entire afternoon

by Andrea Swensson

November 19, 2013

I hope you didn't have anything important you wanted to get done today. Seriously. If you can pull yourself away from this new interactive Bob Dylan video for his song "Like A Rolling Stone"—a video that was released today, approximately 48 years and four months after the song's debut—after playing it just once, then I will salute you. I think I'm on my fourth go-round and I'm still finding new moments to marvel over.

The concept of the video is simple—you're watching TV, and all the usual crap is on, except this time every single person on every single channel is singing along to Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." It's one of his most iconic songs, so it's not difficult to believe that all of these actors would already know all these words, anyway, and the effect is downright mesmerizing. It's hard to know exactly what statement Bob Dylan intended to make with this video, but watching it myself I couldn't help but think about how timeless these lyrics are as they are transposed over modern-day situations and bizarre pop culture snapshots.

Flipping through the channels, there's a Real Housewives of Wherever show singing along, there's Drew Carey leading the entire Price is Right audience through the verses, there's Dylan himself playing the song on some VH1-style channel, and if you're lucky, you'll flip to Pawn Stars (a show that Dylan himself accidentally sauntered into a few years ago) just in time to hear Dylan sing "But you'd better take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe." It'll make you want to keep clicking to find more of these little moments of synchronicity.

"I'm using the medium of television to look back right at us," the video's director, Vania Heymann, told Mashable today.

Try your hand at the video here (will launch on new page):

Screen shot 2013-11-19 at 12.20.09 PM

 

 

Clean Water Land & Legacy Amendment
This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.