Why "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" Spikes Every 4/20
The streaming data doesn't lie: every April, Bob Dylan's 1966 opening track from Blonde on Blonde sees a massive surge in session counts. It's become a piece of cultural shorthand. In the decades since its release, the song's rowdy, Salvation Army-style brass band arrangement and the slurred, communal delivery of the line "Everybody must get stoned" have cemented it as a counter-culture hallmark.
The song got adopted with zero context. To a casual listener in 2026, the connection feels literal. The math myth—where fans point out that 12 × 35 equals 420—only added fuel to the fire, despite the fact that the term "420" wouldn't even be coined by California teenagers for another five years. It's a rare case of a song being retroactively claimed by a movement that didn't exist when the track was cut in a Nashville studio at one in the morning.
There are heavy biblical undertones at play here, specifically the concept of "casting the first stone." Dylan's pointed to the Bible as a reference point for the song, framing the stoning as the price of being a martyr or a social outcast. By turning a literal execution into a celebratory-sounding march, Dylan pulled off his greatest satirical trick: he got the very people who were judging him to sing along to a song about how much they were judging him. That's not to say Dylan didn't get a little high sometimes.
What Bob Dylan Was Actually Getting At
To understand the song, you have to look at the chaos of Dylan's life in the mid-60s. By 1966, he was the target of immense scrutiny. Folk purists felt betrayed by his move to electric instruments, the press was dissecting his every word, and the "voice of a generation" mantle was starting to feel like a cage. When Dylan sings that "everybody must get stoned," he isn't inviting the listener to a party; he's describing a state of relentless persecution. The lyrics follow a weary pattern: you're judged if you're "sent down into the grave," and you're judged if you're "trying to make a buck." In Dylan's world, no matter what path you take, someone is waiting to "stone" you.
The track remains a defining pivot in his catalog—a moment where he traded the earnestness of the protest movement for a surreal, "thin wild mercury" sound that refused to be pinned down. So this 4/20, when the song inevitably climbs the charts again, you'll know: the people lighting up to it are celebrating exactly the kind of misunderstanding Dylan was mocking in the first place.
Active
Yes
Number of Album(s)
40
Date of Birth
May 24, 1941
English (US) ·