Perhaps the most famous music review of all time, legendary rock critic Greil Marcus' review of Bob Dylan's tenth album, Self-Portrait, opens, simply: "What is this sh*t?" Marcus, an ardent Dylan fan, was perplexed as to how an artist as great as Dylan could release such an album, which serves as one of the worst, most self-indulgent LPs ever released by a major recording artist. Full of misjudged covers, scratchy alternate takes, and inconsequential filler, Dylan must surely have known that Self-Portrait was dire, but that didn't stop him from going ahead with it. Marking a point where Dylan really didn't seem to care, the album stands as easily the worst of his pre-80s catalogue. Dylan added to the idea that Self-Portrait was just a big joke by allowing the album Dylan to be released three years later, one which contained no input from himself but did have two alternate takes from Self-Portrait, as if that album was complete in the first place.
