Love Sick

"Love Sick" is a minor-key love song by American musician and Nobel laureate Bob Dylan. It was recorded in January 1997 and appears as the opening track on his 30th studio album Time Out of Mind (1997). It was released as the second single from the album in June 1998 in multiple CD versions, some of which featured Dylan's live performance of the song at the 1998 Grammy Awards. The song was produced by Daniel Lanois. Composition and recording Dylan scholar Tony Attwood characterizes "Love Sick" as the "ultimate, absolute, total, complete lost love song" and "the strangest way ever to start an album – starting with what appears to be the end". Attwood notes that the song's point is revealed in the opening line: "it is the streets that are dead. Not Bob, not his relationship, but the entire world around him. He is walking through nothingness. He has no thoughts". The song is performed in the key of E minor and Attwood sees the desolate lyrical landscape as being reflected in the descending chord progression of the music: "the chords of E minor and D rock back and forth, and the verse ends with a descent of E minor, D major, B minor, A major – and the descent is a descent in every respect. It feels like the end, with the utter perfection of the accompaniment having its own understated say in the instrumental verse". Reception and legacy