What is Bob Dylan up to with this Instagram Post about Aaron Burr?

 

              Aaron Burr, Jr. John Vanderlyn, c.1803, Yale University Art Gallery. 

On September 15, 2025, Bob Dylan posted a video to his Instagram account that contained a first-person biographical account of Aaron Burr, Jr. The post is not a new song or a comment on current events, but rather a direct recitation of detailed historical events. The exact meaning of the post is, like the artist himself, open to interpretation.  Here is the post:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOojlNEgls7/

Summary of the Instagram post

• The video consists of a block of text presented in the style of a journal entry or memoir.
• The text is written from the perspective of Aaron Burr, describing his family history, including his father, Aaron Burr Sr., who was the second President at The College of New Jersey and his mother's father, the famous Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards.
• It does not include any other commentary, music, or explanation from Dylan himself. 

Possible interpretations

As Dylan did not provide any context for the post, its meaning can only be speculated:

• A historical project: The post could be a piece of a larger historical or narrative project. Dylan is a lifelong student of American history and culture, and his work often draws on historical figures and events.  It is reminiscent of his song "Cross the Green Mountain" that reflects deep historical research into the battles and personalities of the Civil War and the period depicted in the film:  "Gods and Generals."  The Music video is a must see: https://youtu.be/Iw8YjVrRNRU?feature=shared.  There have also been a series of posts on Bob's instagram account that follow a similar pattern, which has also featured other historical figures like Andrew Jackson, Stephen Foster, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frank James.
• Lyrical inspiration: He may be hinting at a new song or album that incorporates the story of Aaron Burr, using the post to introduce the theme.  That would certainly be cool.
• Artistic diversion: The post could be an artistic exercise or a simple diversion for Dylan, who is known for his unconventional and sometimes cryptic social media presence.
• Thematic connection: A deeper thematic connection may be intended. Dylan may be drawing parallels between Burr, a brilliant and controversial figure, and the larger themes of legacy, power, and historical injustice that have been present in his own music.  Maybe he sees some parallel in the brilliant but tragically misunderstood "outlaw" figure of Aaron Burr and Dylan's own incredible story.  Burr was just one electorial vote shy of the presidency in 1800. He served as the third vice-president under Jefferson and was the sitting Vice President when he shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He was a senator from New York for six years 1791-1797.  He was the grandson of America's most famous theologian, Jonathan Edwards. He lost both of his remarkable parents when he was just two-years-old.  The orphans Aaron and Sally Burr were taken first to the household of Dr. William Shippen in Philadelphia until his famous grandfather and grandmother took up residence in Aaron's former home, the President's mansion in Princeton.

• His famous grandfather and grandmother took up residence in the President's home and retrieved Burr and his sister, but Jonathan soon died of complications from a failed smallpox innoculation. Burr's grandmother Sarah Pierrepont Edwards intended to take the two small orphans back to the Edward's home in Stockbridge, MA, but she contracted dysentery on the journey and she aslo died.  They were eventually found a home and were cared for by their twenty-year old bachelor uncle Timothy Edwards.
• Reference to Hamilton: The post coincides with a recent revival of interest in Aaron Burr due to the musical Hamilton. While Dylan's post is serious in tone, the timing could be a subtle nod to the cultural conversation surrounding the historical figure. 

What I find most interesting, as a guy working on a Biography of Aaron Burr's teacher John Witherspoon, is that Dylan demonstrates a deep familiarity with Aaron Burr, Sr. and his role as the President of the College of New Jersey.  Also he also gives us some reflection on Jonathan Edwards, and his role in the first great awakening, and author of the famous Sinners in the hand of an Angry God sermon.  He then goes into some detail about the mother of Aaron Burr, Jr., Esther Edwards Burr.   Dylan appears to have read The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757 which are letters written to Sally Prince, her friend in Boston.  The letters give a picture of their eighteenth-century evangelical sisterhood. 

In October 1754 Esther began a journal which she sent at intervals to her best friend Sally (Sarah) Prince of Boston in the form of numbered letters, and received similar missives from Sally. Prince's letters have perished, and Esther's break off early in September 1757.   A few days before the death of her husband, Esther describes her son Aaron:  He is a "little dirty Noisy Boy....very Sly and mischievious" and he is "very resolute and requires a good Governor to bring him to terms."

Her husband Aaron Sr. died later that month.  Then in February 1758 her father, Jonathan Edwards, was inaugurated president of the College to succeed Aaron Burr, Sr. but he too died in March; Esther herself succumbed to a fever early in April of the same year as her father.  Bob Dylan has put together an accurate timeline of all this tragedy and shows its potential devastating impact on the later character of the infamous Aaron Burr.

This is a 1764 copper engraving by Philadelphia artist Henry Dawkins — copied from a drawing by William Tennent, a 1758 alumnus.  It shows Nassau Hall (at left) as it likely looked when the Aaron Burr, Sr. family lived here. The building, Nassau Hall, as the largest stone structure in America at the time, was completed in 1756.  The house on the right is the President's house where the elder Burr family lived, moving in December, 1756. Jonathan and Sarah Edwards came to be installed as the new president after Aaron Burr, Sr. died. The younger Burr's mother, Esther died in April of 1758 less than a month after her father passed away from a failed smallpox inoculation.  Sarah Edwards traveled to Philadelphia to retrieve and care for her orphaned grandchildren Aaron and his sister Sally. Sarah Edwards died in October of 1758.

The journal of Esther and Sally is a rare self-revelation of a beautiful person. Bob Dylan seems to have read these letters.  Has Mick Jagger gotten into this yet?  Could Bruce Springstein give a good account of historical significance of The College of New Jersey in colonial America, even though it is in his native state?  What could Paul McCartney tell us about The Great Awakening and the eighteenth century evangelical sisterhood?

The artist has a good imagination which is revealed as he is accurately imagining what it would be like to live in early Colonial America.  He has some beautiful writing in here, for example, in the hot summer days, "your shirt clings to you like guilt."  "The wind took on that clean edge [in the fall] that told you to prepare."

Dylan has all the details right about Burr at the College of New Jersey, and Burr being a young prodigy coming to the college at the early age of 13 and his accelerated track to early graduation in 1772 at age 16.  It would have been interesting to hear more about his college days being one of the 22 graduates in 1772.  One in attendance along with him would have been the future president of the United States, James Madison who graduated in 1771.  Madison, like Burr, wisely spent an extra year with Dr. Witherspoon studying Hebrew, and other subjects to match his remarkable expertise in Latin.  In this way, they were both likely the very first American Graduates students.  Madison, like many of Witherspoon's students, went on to incredible future success as "The Father of the American Constitution" and he was Secretary of State under Jefferson for 8 years (1801-1809) before serving as President of the United States for 8 years (1809-1817).  Aaron Burr was Vice President under Jefferson during his first term (1801-1805), having tied with Jefferson in the electoral college, each receiving 73 electoral votes in the 1800 Presidental election. 

Dylan gives a good gritty account of what it was really like at Valley Forge.  As well as an unvarnished look at General Washington who never got along well with Aaron Burr.  And Dylan also describes Burr's rivalry with Alexander Hamilton very well.  "Civility yes, but war beneath the skin." .... "He sought legacy, I sought reality.  But in the end we both lost."

This is another interesting art form, coming from a guy who has released 40 influential albums, over 600 published songs, 230 paintings, according to collector and gallery sources tracking his official output.  There are his films and his best-selling books.  Chronicles received widespread critical acclaim and spent 19 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover nonfiction books. Although Dylan later won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, this honor was awarded for his overall contribution to literature—especially his songwriting.  And lets not forget the metallurgy! 

What Dylan is doing in exploring this new art form, and what this context-less post means is anybody's guess.  Maybe at age 84, he is trying his hand at historical fiction in case he ever needs to pick up a side hussel to suplement his retirement should he ever decide to retire from his never-ending tour.

Doug

You can find the full written text to the Instagram Post at this link and scroll down.

Tell me what you think is going on with this Instagram Post in the comments.

"Property of Jesus" is just a "Positively 4th Street" redux

To really get inside of Bob Dylan songs you have to go back to when they were written and understand the forces at work. That is one of the benefits of the new film "A Complete Unknown." Some of those early songs take on new meaning when you know the back story.

"Property of Jesus" is really an excellently crafted song. It hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves because of it's lethal content, which comes on kinda strong. At that time, Copywright © 1981, many of Bob's fan's had turned on him for releasing three albums in succession of what his atheist producer on Slow Train Coming, Jerry Wexler, called "wall-to-wall Jesus."

But isn't that what we love about Bob Dylan? He is no half-way kind of guy. If he has something worth saying, he is gonna say it, in the best way he knows how, and he is gonna let the let the chips fall where they may.

When "Positively 4th Street" first came out in 1967, I remember hearing the song off of the first Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Album (1967), but this wasn't even a previously released song, so how can it be one of his "Greatest Hits?" That's just Bob doing his thing, messing with your mind. It's akin to releasing a second album of the Traveling Wilburys called Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 3 in 1990. You picture all these fans looking through their stacks of albums for Vol. 2, with a puzzeled look on their faces. The bottom line is, Bob thought "Positively 4th Street" was one of his greatest hits, so therefore it is include on this album for its first official release.

In the song we hear him dispensing a series of unmitigated blistering attacks on his "fair-weather friends." I remember thinking at the time, I have never heard a song like this in my whole life! But I like it! And I can relate to it! But can you really say things like this and get away with it? Is it legal to attack somebody this hard? Isn't he gonna get in trouble for baring his soul and his true feelings about somebody like this? Surely the targets of his abuse must know who they are!

The copywright on this song is 1965, so that is right after going through what Bob has recently called "the fiasco at Newport" back on July 25th, 1965. With those words he was encouraging people to go see the new film "A Complete Unknown." The film did a fine job taking us back into the zeitgeist of where he was at the time. In one of the final scenes of the movie, he decides he is just going to take off, riding his motorcycle into the sunset while Pete Seeger is trying to take down and put away the chairs from the Newport Folk Festival. I can see Bob coming up with this song while he is riding off into the sunset.

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning
You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it

.....

I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it

.......

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you

He just ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more!

The themes are very similar in "Property of Jesus," and when Bob turns on you, you best look out! Just ask A.J. Weberman. Weberman claimed that Bob Dylan assaulted him in 1971, pushing him to the ground, down on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan when Dylan became upset that Weberman had reneged on their agreement not to search through his trash.

There are some great jabs in the "Property of Jesus" song at people like John Lennon who were upset by Dylan's conversion to Christ because it seemed to go against everything Dylan had previously represented. So Dylan writes: "Remind him of what he used to be when he comes walkin’ through." And Dylan then puts himself into the seat of scoffers: "Hope he falls upon himself, oh, won’t that be sweet."

What is so great about this song is Dylan's full recognition of the reality that everyone is serving some kind of king.

"Because he doesn’t pay no tribute to the king that you serve."

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

So Property of Jesus winds down these strong lines:

You can laugh at salvation, you can play Olympic games You think [erroniously] that when you rest at last [i.e. When you die] you’ll go back from where you came But you’ve picked up quite a story [a story of sin and thus impending judgement] and you’ve changed since the womb What happened to the real you, you’ve been captured but by whom? [You been captured by Satan, who sometimes comes as a man of peace.] A couple of wise women, heard and understood the dynamic power that always lay latent in this great song, "The Property of Jesus." Chrissie Hynde used it as a closer for some of her concerts. You gotta love the grove that she set up in the first minute of her amazing cover . Then check out Sinead O'Connor doing it on the Chimes Of Freedom Album: These ladies knew that you can throw down some seriously strong shade, along with some epic declamations, and also get a lot off of your chest, when you attack the work of the devil and his minions in this way.

Doug