Dylan Song by Song: "She Belongs to Me" Quiz

Answer: Bringing It All Back Home

Columbia Records released "Bringig It All Back Home," Dylan's fifth studio album, on March 22, 1965. The album was half electric and half acoustic in a movement away from Dylan's earlier folk protest songs. "She Belongs to Me" was also released as a single with "Subterranean Homesick Blues" on the A-side.

Answer: black

"She's got everything she needs,
She's an artist, she don't look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black."

In his book "Song and Dance Man III," Michael Gray writes that this line "perfectly represents the spirit of blues lyric poetry" while at the same time "being wholly new."

Answer: Her keyhole

"You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees."

The song paints a picture of a self-confident, powerful, but detached woman. The title seems ironic in light of this - the subject does not appear to belong to anyone.

Answer: Egyptian

"She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks.
She's a hypnotist collector.
You are a walking antique."

Fellow folk singer and former lover of Dylan, Joan Baez, wore an Egyptian ring, which has caused some reviewers and fans to speculate that she may have been the subject of this song.

Answer: When her birthday comes

"For Halloween, give her a trumpet, / And for Christmas, buy her a drum," the singer says, but "salute her when her birthday comes."

Joan Baez once wrote that Bob Dylan "has a gift for keeping thing vague." One can see that ambiguity throughout this song, which can be regarded as cynical and bitter or as a love song, depending on the perspective of the interpreter.

Answer: Nico

Dylan met Nico in Paris in 1964, and they had a brief affair. As mentioned earlier, folksinger Joan Baez has also been suggested as a potential subject of this song. So, too, has Suze Rotolo, who was Bob Dylan's ex-girlfriend at the time and an artist herself.

Another popular suggestion is Sara Lownds, the woman Dylan would go on to marry a few months after this album was released. The song could be about one of these women, in some sense all of them, or none of them, but they've all been proposed as potential subjects.

Answer: nobody's

These lines are found in the third stanza of the song. The fact that the subject is "nobody's child" seems to further emphasizes her lack of attachments.

"She Belongs to Me" was translated into French and recorded by Francis Cabrel as "Elle m'appartient (C'est une artiste)." The song is included on the musician's 2008 album "Des roses et des orties."

Answer: No Direction Home

"No Direction Home" focuses on the time between when Dylan first burst on the scene in New York and when he temporarily retired from touring after his July 1966 motorcycle accident. It examines both Bob Dylan's life and his impact on music and the broader culture. The soundtrack to this documentary was later released as "Bootleg Volume 7."

"The Last Waltz," which was released in 1978, was also directed by Martin Scorsese and chronicles the Band's 1976 farewell concert. The movie "Renaldo and Clara" was a 1978 film written and directed by and starring Bob Dylan. It was co-written by Sam Shepherd and also featured Joan Baez. "Searching for Sugarman" is a 2012 Swedish (and Finnish and British) documentary about musician Sixto Rodriguez and was directed by Malik Bendjelloul.

Answer: The Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead not only covered Dylan songs over the years, but also played in concert with him. In 1989, they released a live album together with Bob Dylan called, simply enough, "Dylan and the Dead." It contained seven Bob Dylan songs.

American pop star Ricky Nelson has covered "She Belong to Me," producing a Top 40 Hit with his country version of the song.

Answer: Tina Turner

Tina Turner released the song on her 1974 debut solo album "Tina Turns the Country On." The album, never released on CD (as of 2019), also contains a cover of Bob Dylan's "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You." Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock and became a Swiss citizen in 2013.