Bob Dylan Duets With Barbra Streisand, Announces Art Book, Plays “The Times They Are A-Changin'” For The First Time In 15 Years

Bob Dylan turned 84 last month, and he remains as busy as ever. Dylan is currently on Willie Nelson's Outlaw Music Festival tour, and he recently played "All Along The Watchtower" with Billy Strings and narrated the trailer for Machine Gun Kelly's new album. Now, he's got a brand new duet with Barbra Streisand, which almost certainly makes him the only artist who's worked with both Streisand and MGK this year.

We knew that the Streisand duet was coming. Back in April, Streisand announced her new duets album The Secret Of Life: Partners, Volume 2, and it's out today. The entire idea of a new Barbra Streisand duets album in 2025 isn't the easiest thing to wrap your head around, but the strangest thing about it was almost certainly the inclusion of a song with Bobby D, whose voice simply isn't built to share space with Babs'. Streisand feels the same way. Last week, Streisand told The New York Times that Dylan sent her flowers with a card back in the '70s: "In childish handwriting in different-color crayons, he wrote 'Would you sing with me?' I thought, 'What the hell am I going to sing with Bob Dylan?'"

Streisand says she warmed to the idea when she learned that Dylan wrote "Lay Lady Lay" for her, and she noticed when he recorded three albums of standards. In a Billboard interview, Streisand says how she considered the idea of singing with Dylan:

The interesting thing is that I saw it as an acting piece. It’s two different people, how they were feeling each other out: what kind of emotions are going on when two people have known of each other for such a long time but never met. It was wonderful to work with him, actually. I did my part earlier in the day, and it worked out perfectly with his. I’m ever the director. And he wanted direction, which was so lovely: “What do you think? What do you want?” He just was so open to trying this or trying that. It was really easy.

The two of them came together on a version of the old standard "The Very Thought Of You," and their version is awfully soft and tender. It's much less jarring than what I guess I was expecting. Listen below.

This doesn't have anything to do with Dylan, but in a recent Variety interview, Streisand also reacts to the news that Ariana Grande, another of her singing partners on the new album, is acting in a new Meet The Parents sequel. It appears that Streisand, who was in 2004's Meet The Fockers and 2010's Little Fockers, will not be joining her. Upon hearing the news, Streisand says, "You're kidding... Oh my God. They’d have to pay me a lot of money because I didn’t get paid what the other people got paid and so I’m pissed off. I was in the time when women were getting paid less than the men. The head of Universal was Ron Meyer at the time, and he actually sent me a bonus check. It was very sweet."

Anyway, back to Bob Dylan. Simon & Schuster recently announced plans to publish Point Blank (Quick Studies), the first book of Dylan's visual artwork in a while. It'll include nearly 100 black and white drawings that Dylan did between 2021 and 2022. The drawings were on display at London's Halcyon Gallery earlier this year.

Also, the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa recently announced plans for a new exhibit called Going Electric: Bob Dylan '65. As part of the festivities, Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo will serve as musical director for a pair of all-star concerts from the Million Dollar Bashers, an ad hoc supergroup that'll play Dylan's mid-'60s electric songs. The lineup includes Ranaldo and his former Sonic Youth bandmate Steve Shelley, Wilco's Nels Cline and Mikael Jorgensen, Luna's Dene Wareham and Britta Phillips, X's John Doe, Howlin Rain's Ethan Miller, Robyn Hitchcock, Sunny War, Emma Swift, Joy Harjo, and Doug Keith. (Ranaldo, Shelley, and Doe all played on the soundtrack for Todd Haynes' 2007 Dylan biopic I'm Not There.) The shows go down 7/26 at Cain's Ballroom; check out the details here.

Finally, Dylan recently played his immortal 1964 song "The Times They Are A-Changin'" live for the first time since 2010, when he performed it in a gala honoring the Civil Rights movement at Barack Obama's White House. The song is back in the spotlight after it supplied the climactic moment of the new Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. As Rolling Stone points out, Dylan broke the song out when the Outlaw Music Festival came to Franklin, Tennessee's Firstbank Amphitheatre on Wednesday. There aren't many good videos of the performance, a strange and off-kilter version of the track. If you've got a BlueSky account, you can see one video here. If you don't, here's a short clip.

Bob Dylan’s first performance of The Times They Are A-Changin’ in 16 years — this evening in beautiful Franklin, Tennessee

courtesy of friend of the pod @JAJCenter pic.twitter.com/Q4pwVDaDTL

— Jokermen (@JokermenPodcast) June 26, 2025

Also fired Who drummer Zak Starkey is hoping Dylan gives him a job: