The times they are a-changin’.
For nearly seventy years Bob Dylan has been making music, and throughout his entire career he’s been a man of few words. He rarely gives interviews, earning himself a mysterious persona. And, in the age of social media, little has changed.
Dylan, 84, joined Twitter, now X, in 2009, but the account was managed by his team. But, that changed in September 2024 when the songwriter took over, and suddenly Dylan’s posts transformed from polished and management-run career announcements to personal, often cryptic and perplexing messages, which are as few and far between as his interviews. His latest post is no different.
“Happy Birthday Shostakovich. Tea for Two – Fantastic! You won the bet,” wrote Dylan.
For music lovers, Dmitri Shostakovich might not be an entirely unfamiliar name. The famed Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist was among the greatest and most well known composers of the twentieth century. And, “Tea for Two,” is the name of a song by Vincent Youmans that Shostakovich worked into his original-turned-hybrid composition called “Tahiti Trot.” But what does Dylan mean by “You won the bet?”
In 1928, Shostakovich shared ‘Tahiti Trot’ with conductor Nikolai Malko for the first time. Malko wagered a bet that Shastakovich wouldn’t be able to complete the orchestration of “Tea for Two” in under an hour. But, the composer proved Malko wrong. He completed the orchestration in forty minutes, winning the bet.
Whether Dylan was intentionally cryptic in his post or simply shared what was on his mind, fans will never know. But, all it takes to understand Dylan’s reluctance to speak publicly despite his prolific body of work is a look at one of his earliest interviews after he was catapulted to fame.
“If you give an interview to one magazine,” said Dylan in a 1969 interview, “then another one’ll get mad. People don’t understand that the press, they just use you to sell papers. And, in a certain way, that’s not bad, but when they misquote you all the time, and when they just use you to fill in some story, it hurts because you think you were just played for a fool.”
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 28, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
