The Track Seven Rule applies to Bob Dylan.
I'll let you into a little secret of music journalism. When hacks are ploughing through their album reviews, there's a little trick a lot of them tend to employ: the Track Seven Rule. It goes like this. Listen to the first track. Listen to the seventh track. If neither of them are any cop, it's not worth bothering with the rest of the album. Don't believe me? Here's an utterly random selection of albums from my iPod, followed by their seventh track:
Johnny Cash, American IV - Personal Jesus Mary J Blige, My Life - My Life Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future - Gravity's Rainbow Bob Dylan, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - Knockin' on Heaven's Door Rufus Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright - Beauty Mark The Stone Roses, Second Coming - Begging You Prince Po, The Slickness - The Slickness The Beatles, Abbey Road - Here Comes The Sun Portishead, Dummy - Numb The Fall, Fall Heads Roll - Blindness Pixies, Doolittle - Monkey Gone to Heaven
Each one is an undisputed highlight of the album. And this seems to happen with unerring frequency. Musicians have long embraced the mysticism of the number seven - from the two sevens clash superstitions of reggae and punk to the sixth-form poetry of Seven and the Ragged Tiger, but I suspect there's a rather more prosaic reason for the power of seven. It comes at the moment when most listeners' attentions are beginning to flag. In old money terms, it's usually the first or second track on side B: a good point to up the tempo with a bit of a corker. So now you know. Next time you're window-shopping for albums via the 30-second previews on iTunes, go straight to number seven...
