Self Portrait is the tenth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on June 8, 1970, by Columbia Records.

Most of the album is sung in the affected country crooning voice that Dylan had introduced a year earlier on Nashville Skyline.

Dylan has stated in interviews that Self Portrait was something of a joke, far below the standards he set in the 1960s, and was made to end the "spokesman of a generation" label that critics had put on him.

"[2] However, in a Rolling Stone interview, in 1984, Dylan gave a different reason for the album's release: At the time, I was in Woodstock, and I was getting a great degree of notoriety for doing nothing.

And to me, it was a joke.As to why he chose to release a double album, Dylan replied, "Well, it wouldn't have held up as a single album–then it really would've been bad, you know.

Also, I wasn't going to be anybody's puppet and I figured this record would put an end to that...I was just so fed up with all that 'who people thought I was' nonsense.Later interviews only echoed the sentiments expressed to Crowe.

One of them is written by Alfred Frank Beddoe (who was "discovered" by Pete Seeger after applying for work at People's Songs, Inc. in 1946), "Copper Kettle" captures an idyllic backwoods existence, where moonshine is equated not only with pleasure but with tax resistance.

Appalachian farmers who struggled to make their living off the land would routinely siphon off a percentage of their corn in order to distill whiskey.

Clinton Heylin writes, "'Copper Kettle'...strike[s] all the right chords...being one of the most affecting performances in Dylan's entire official canon.

"[4] Music critic Tim Riley called it "an ingenious Appalachian zygote for rock attitudes, the hidden source of John Wesley Harding's shadows.

Among the original songs written for the album, the instrumental "Wigwam" later achieved recognition for its use in the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums.

The version on Self Portrait, however, is a soundboard-sourced live performance from Dylan and the Band's Isle of Wight Festival concert (as are three other tracks on the album).

First, that 'self' is most accurately defined (and depicted) in terms of the artifacts—in this case, pop tunes and folk songs claimed as personal property and semispontaneous renderings of past creations frozen for posterity on a piece of tape and (perhaps) even a couple of songs one has written oneself—to which one responds.

The singing is not consistently good, though it has its moments, and the production—for which I blame Bob Johnston, though Dylan has to be listed as a coconspirator—ranges from indifferent to awful.

"), Greil Marcus warned, "Unless [Dylan] returns to the marketplace, with a sense of vocation and the ambition to keep up with his own gifts, the music of [the mid-sixties] will continue to dominate his records, whether he releases them or not.

Weberman, Dylan can be heard responding angrily to the Marcus review, while attempting to defend larger accusations of perceived non-committal politics.

Appalled at the negative reviews directed at the album, Bolan wrote a letter in its defence to the 11 July 1970 edition of Melody Maker: I've just listened to Dylan's new album, and in particular "Belle Isle", and I feel deeply moved that such a man is making music in my time.

Dylan's songs are now mainly love ballads, the writing of which is one of the most poetic art forms since the dawn of man.

"Belle Isle" brought to my memory all the moments of tenderness I've ever felt for another human being, and that, within the superficial landscape of pop music, is a great thing indeed.

Please, all the people who write bitterly of a lost star, remember that with maturity comes change, as surely as death follows life.

In all three editions, the original lyrics from Self Portrait are never acknowledged, suggesting Dylan's disavowal of the whole album to that time.