Critics projected collective unity onto a mediocre Dylan album.

Evidence

Taking New Morning for a sign, Gleason had a fantasy that all the cars on I-80 were tuned to the Bay Area’s community rock station and “the Dylan album was blowing their minds that very minute and I looked at the drivers as they went past me and they had smiles on their faces … This is a hopeful album and my God how we need it.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1648

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how a faltering counterculture manufactured significance through media fantasy — the demand for a unifying ‘collective drama’ that no artwork could actually supply.