In preparing for his role as Bob Dylan inA Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet went above and beyond to capture the spirit of Dylan’s musicality. The actor learned to play and sing over 40Bob Dylan songs, perfecting Dylan’s early singing style as well as his way of playing guitar, harmonica, and piano. Chalamet got to knowDylan’s discographyinside out, obsessively poring over the albumsThe Times They Are A-Changin’andBringing It All Back Homein particular. The latter LP is Chalamet’s favorite Dylan record, which is also a popular choice among longtime fans of the singer.
Timothée Chalamet’s favorite individual Bob Dylan compositions are a little harder to pin down, asthe actor’s specific song tastes are more eclectic than his general preference for Dylan’s musicfrom the period in which his portrayal of the singer-songwriter is set. Nevertheless, some ofChalamet’s best awards season moments from 2024 and 2025provide definitive insights into which Dylan songs Chalamet loves the most. They span the entirety of Bob Dylan’s first decade as a recording artist and include some deeper cuts that are often overlooked by more casual Dylan fans.
6“Song To Woody”
1962
Unsurprisingly,the song that produces one of the most powerful moments inA Complete Unknownis among Timothée Chalamet’s favorite Bob Dylan compositions. The movie’s fictionalized version of Dylan’s first visit to Woody Guthrie’s room in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital sees Chalamet perform a moving rendition of “Song To Woody” to an audience of Scoot McNairy’s Guthrie and Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger.
Guthrie later gives his harmonica to Chalamet’s Dylanin recognition of the honor his protege has bestowed on him. “Song to Woody” is the earliest Bob Dylan composition included on one of Dylan’s studio albums, and it encapsulates the overwhelming influence that Guthrie’s music and personal story had on the musician as a teenager. In anApple Musicinterview with Zane Lowe, Timothée Chalamet called it “one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs ever”.
The piece wasthe first one Chalamet performed while shootingA Complete Unknown. The intensity of performing a song that meant so much to him took its emotional toll, with the actor admitting he “went home and wept” after the shoot was completed.
5“Tomorrow Is A Long Time”
1963
“Tomorrow Is a Long Time” doesn’t feature inA Complete Unknown, and is one of Bob Dylan’s lesser-known compositions from the 1960s. A hidden gem that had already been bootlegged before it mysteriously turned up on Dylan’s 1971 compilation albumGreatest Hits Vol. II,the singer wrote the piece during hisFreewheelin' Bob Dylandayswhile pining for his absent girlfriend Suze Rotolo (named Sylvie Russo and played by Elle Fanning inA Complete Unknown). He played it live at New York’s Town Hall in 1963, which was the version of the song released eight years later.
Each of the three Bob Dylan songs that Chalamet played onSNLwas specifically chosen by the actor because of his personal attachment to them.
Timothée Chalamet performed the ballad while onSaturday Night Livehosting duties on July 11, 2025, as one of the Dylan songs he counted among his favorites. Each of the three songs Chalamet played onSNLwas specifically chosen by the actor because of his personal attachment to them.
4“Outlaw Blues”
1965
The second of Chalamet’s three Dylan favorites that he performed onSNLin chronological order of their release dates is “Outlaw Blues”,a rollicking, uptempo electric number from the actor’s favorite Bob Dylan album,Bringing It All Back Home. Chalamet was clearly having a blast in his off-the-wall live performance of the song, reflecting the spirit in which it was originally recorded in January 1965. He’d already confirmed it as one of his favorite Dylan tracks a month earlier, in an interview withUproxx.
“Outlaw Blues” lends itself to raw, hard-edged rock and roll, as The White Stripes proved with a stripped-back live iteration of the track during theirElephanttour back in 2003. It’s an unusual choice for a favorite Bob Dylan song, however, which will have endeared Timothée Chalamet to a lot of the musician’s fans.
3“It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
On the other hand, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”, also from the 1965 LPBringing It All Back Home, is a far more common favorite song among Bob Dylan fans.Widely regarded as having one of the greatest lyrics in modern music history, the song contains many of Dylan’s most famous poetic aphorisms, from“Money doesn’t talk, it swears,“to“He not busy being born is busy dying.”
Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan is seen composing the latter line of thesong inA Complete Unknown, during a midnight visit to Joan Baez’s room in Hotel Chelsea. Yet the actor had already developed an obsession with the song long before shooting this scene, as he tweeted the same aphorism without context on Twitter (now X) back in August 2020.
“Ballad of a Thin Man” is another Bob Dylan composition generally considered to be a masterpiece. The song isthe ultimate riposte to Dylan’s media acolytes and critics alike, and its snarling acidity is what first drew Timothée Chalamet into the world of Dylan’s music.
In his interview with Zane Lowe forApple Music, Chalamet described how the live version of “Ballad of a Thin Man” that features in Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan documentary movieNo Direction Homewas his “way in” to the entire sound palette required toperform as Bob Dylan inA Complete Unknown. The actor was apparently impressed with Dylan’s scathing attitude towards outsiders who didn’t get his art, too, and the musician’s insistence on letting his work speak for itself. Few, if any, Bob Dylan compositions epitomize this sentiment better than “Ballad of a Thin Man”.
1“Three Angels”
1970
The lightest track among Timothée Chalamet’s favorite Bob Dylan songs, “Three Angels” features spoken-word verses over gently cascading guitar licks and organ chords, as a choir swells to a crescendo in the background. It’s the kind of left-field pick we might expect from Chalamet, but he did it justice with a sincere and slightly bombastic performance of the song onSNL.
Out of all Chalamet’s choices, this one demonstrates just how much Bob Dylan the actor was listening to just the making ofA Complete Unknown. Not content with absorbing the music of the early Dylan he was playing, he went even deeper into the artist’s back catalog and gave pieces of music that might otherwise have been forgotten by time their moment in the limelight.
