Lyrics and Meaning of “4th Time Around” by Bob Dylan
Unraveling the Mystery Behind Dylan’s Cryptic Folk-Rock Gem
Few songwriters in the history of popular music possess the layered lyrical mystique of Bob Dylan, and nowhere is that mystery more playfully, yet provocatively, deployed than in his song “4th Time Around.” Released in 1966 on the landmark album Blonde on Blonde, the track is a labyrinth of emotional tension, veiled parody, and lyrical sleight of hand.
Often interpreted as a cryptic response to The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood”, Dylan’s “4th Time Around” twists the romantic, almost whimsical tone of that earlier song into something darker, stranger, and more psychologically fraught. But to see it merely as a parody would be to miss its deeper emotional and artistic power. Let’s dive into the world of the song, its meaning, and what it tells us about Dylan, his contemporaries, and his creative mind in flux.
The Meaning of 4th Time Around Lyrics
Here are the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s 4th Time Around:
When she said, “Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies”
I cried she was deaf
And she worked on my face until breaking my eyes
And saying “What else you got left?”
It was then that I got up to leave
But she said, “Don’t forget
Everybody must give something back
For something they get”
I stood there and hummed, I tapped on her drum
I asked her how come
And she buttoned her boot, and straightened her suit
And she said, “Don’t be cute”
So I forced my hands in my pockets
And felt with my thumbs
And gallantly handed her my very last piece of gum
She threw me outside, I stood in the dirt
Where everyone walked
And, when finding out I’d forgotten my shirt
I went back and knocked
I waited in the hallway, she went to get it
And I tried to make sense
Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair
That leaned up against
Her Jamaican rum, and when she did come
I asked her for some
She said, “No, dear”, I said, “Your words are not clear
You’d better spit out your gum”
She screamed till her face got so red
Then she fell on the floor
And, I covered her up and then went and looked through her drawer
And when I was through, I filled up my shoe
And brought it to you
And you, you took me in, you loved me then
You never wasted time
And I, I never took much, I never asked for your crutch
Now don’t ask for mine
The song begins with a confrontation between the narrator and an unnamed woman. Her accusation
—“Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies”—
is met with surreal resistance: “I cried she was deaf”.
The narrator seems caught in an emotional bind, his internal landscape as fractured as the dialogue is cryptic.
Throughout the song, Dylan’s narrator lurches from tenderness to sarcasm, from memory to absurdity. The scene is disorienting, emotionally raw, and often absurdist—hallmarks of Dylan’s mid-’60s lyrical style. The entire second verse builds a comic sequence from minor exchanges—a piece of gum, a forgotten shirt—but behind the whimsy is a deeper exploration of emotional transaction. When she throws him out and he returns, we sense both estrangement and attachment. Their relationship seems mired in habitual miscommunication, mutual performance, and emotional imbalance.
In the line: “Everybody must give something back for something they get” , the woman asserts a sort of karmic or moral economy. This sets a major theme of the song: emotional reciprocity, or the lack thereof. The narrator’s gesture offering his “very last piece of gum” feels both desperate and trivial. Dylan juxtaposes sincerity with insignificance, suggesting that the terms of emotional exchange are often absurd.
Later, Dylan paints an image both surreal and haunting: “that picture of you in your wheelchair / that leaned up against her Jamaican rum”. These details are not literal—they’re evocative symbols. The wheelchair may imply vulnerability, memory, or loss. The Jamaican rum could represent escapism or indulgence. In classic Dylan fashion, the song defies straightforward narrative but conjures unmistakable emotion.
By the final stanza, the perspective shifts. The narrator addresses someone new—perhaps a former lover, perhaps the same woman at a different moment in time. There is a quiet, almost tender confession:
“You, you took me in, you loved me then / You never wasted time”.
This contrasts sharply with the earlier chaotic scenes. The closing line—“I never asked for your crutch / Now don’t ask for mine” is perhaps the most devastating line of all. It offers a personal boundary cloaked in biting detachment. Dylan isn’t simply singing about love gone wrong; he’s questioning the very mechanics of intimacy, support, and self-reliance.
A Song as Mirror: Dylan and The Beatles
It’s nearly impossible to talk about “4th Time Around” without acknowledging its dialogue with John Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood”. Lennon himself reportedly found the similarities unsettling. Dylan’s lilting melody and finger-picked style mirror the Beatles’ track almost too closely to be coincidence.
Yet, Dylan subverts the romanticized ambiguity of “Norwegian Wood” with his own brand of irony and menace. Where Lennon’s narrator seems bemused and possibly triumphant in a romantic misadventure, Dylan’s narrator is lost, humiliated, emotionally exposed.
In that sense, “4th Time Around” might be read as a rejoinder to emotional detachment. Dylan appears to be poking fun at the stylized, safe confessions of the pop world, injecting them with real psychological weight.
Legacy and Influence
“4th Time Around” has lived in the shadow of Dylan’s more overtly political or anthemic works, but it remains a key to understanding his Blonde on Blonde period—a moment when his lyrics became not just poetic, but cubist, breaking apart narrative, time, and emotion.
The song has been covered only sparingly, perhaps because it’s so thorny, so internally enigmatic. But among Dylanologists and lyric scholars, it’s seen as a turning point in songcraft—a song that plays with form while dismantling the very idea of lyrical sincerity.
“4th Time Around” stands as a deeply introspective, emotionally complex, and subtly confrontational song in Dylan’s vast catalog. Whether it’s about emotional games, artistic rivalry, or inner alienation, the song resists closure—offering instead a world of emotional shadows.
It is, in a word, Dylanesque: cryptic, confessional, comical, and, somehow, still tender.