There appears to be an unfinished Post Malone song based on lyrics by Bob Dylan. The
told producer Michael Cash ROLLING STONE. The track was said to be for a collection of Dylan songs inspired by T Bone Burnett’s 2014 album Lost On the River, which featured musicians such as Marcus Mumford and Elvis Costello using unused lyrics from recorded Bob Dylan.
The plan was to get rappers like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, and of course Post Malone (who is said to be a huge fan of the songwriter) to basically record a rapped Dylan album. As Jeff Rosen, the singer’s manager, explained to Cash, Bob Dylan had something in mind that he wanted to develop specifically for Malone. A source told ROLLING STONE that those lyrics are actually already “laying around somewhere.”
How it actually came about and what the background is is still unclear, but Rosen actually sent out lyrics for a song called “Be Not Deceived” in November 2020. Cash describes the lyrics as a hymn “about the loss of innocence” and specifies that it would be about “disenfranchised, leaderless masses of children with no parents or guardians or shepherds or anything.”
Post Malone’s Dylan song: Something went seriously wrong
According to Michael Cash, what followed is not easy to reconstruct. According to Malone, he was very touched by the lyrics and traveled to the producer’s studio in March 2021 to record the song. He sincerely believed he could meet his idol and record the song with him. He did it in vain.
Despite all sorts of distractions, a small part, according to Cash about 40 percent, of a song was completed that Malone’s producer Louis Bell also worked on. “It needed flair, it needed more layers, it wasn’t a complete piece of music, but it was definitely a song,” Cash said of ROLLING STONE. “It had a beginning, a middle and an end. There was a bridge, there was a chorus. But it still had to be finished.”
Now something happened that cannot be fully explained. Malone lost interest or found the time to work on the song, although Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen, communicated the Nobel laureate’s approval. Cash just couldn’t get Malone back in the studio. “This is where it gets really weird,” he says.
“But that should be finished now”
Eventually, Dylan and his team grew impatient. “Rosen said to me at a certain point, ‘Well, we’re just going to retract the lyrics,'” Cash recalls. “Bob and Mr. Rosen just go about things a certain way. They tend to rush through them when it gets specific, and then they just get too lazy… To be honest, they got very direct and conveyed, ‘Now that should be done.’”
Cash continues: “It seems like nobody really had the expectations associated with the piece under control, and it seems like something didn’t work out with the communication.” A really “cool piece” is there on It was created, says Cash, but it just didn’t work out.
What really happened to “Be Not Deceived” will probably never be fully revealed. But maybe the pressure to do something with real Dylan lyrics was too much for Malone. In the past, the rapper – who covered one of the master’s tracks early in his career with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” and also has a Dylan tattoo on his arm – has indicated several times that for him the legendary songwriter is one of the few musicians who bring him to tears. Maybe the awe was just too great.
In any case, Michael Cash sincerely hopes that Bob Dylan and Jeff Rosen will change their minds and release the lyrics again, so that the song can still be written.