Bob Dylan
Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart

Dylan released Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, Dylan explained it originated when French director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his movie My Own Love Song. He initially intended to record a single track, "Life Is Hard", but "the record sort of took its own direction". Nine of the album's ten songs are credited as co-written by Dylan and Robert Hunter. The album received largely favorable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon. In its first week of release, the album reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, making Dylan, at 67 years of age, the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.

Dylan's Christmas in the Heart was released in October 2009, comprising such Christmas standards as " Little Drummer Boy ", " Winter Wonderland " and " Here Comes Santa Claus ". Edna Gundersen wrote that Dylan was "revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers ". Dylan's royalties from the album were donated to the charities Feeding America in the US, Crisis in the UK, and the World Food Programme. The album received generally favorable reviews. In an interview published in The Big Issue, Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and he replied: "There wasn't any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too."
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