Bob Dylan's Xmas Album 'Sort of Insane'

With the announcement of Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart, “smirkers got smirkier”—you try picturing Dylan singing the lyric, “How’d ya like to hang a stocking on a great big coconut tree?” without smirking—but in the end, the collection is interesting, if a bit silly; “a surreal and occasionally rousing collection of gooey holiday ballads,” writes Amanda Petrusich for Pitchfork.

It’s not clear how seriously we’re supposed to take the album—is Bob Dylan, who also recently appeared in an out-of-character Victoria’s Secret ad, deliberately railing against his canonization with a tongue-in-cheek collection of holiday tunes? Maybe—or “maybe, like zillions of red-blooded, religiously ambiguous American dudes, Bob Dylan just likes Christmastime and Adriana Lima. And we're stupid for presuming anything more.” (More Bob Dylan stories.)