[6] Brian Hiatt, writing in Rolling Stone, where the song placed first on a 2020 list of "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century", saw it as a stylistic about-face from 1997's Daniel Lanois-produced Time Out of Mind and the beginning of an important new chapter in Dylan's career: "The effortless feel of the playful-yet-ominous, hard-grooving, utterly dazzling 'Things Have Changed' was an early indication of the renewed friskiness of Dylan’s 21st-century work — and the vividly live-in-the studio creations he would achieve as his own producer, with the help of engineer Chris Shaw".

[10] Sources agree the musicians who accompanied Dylan in the studio were his touring band at the time: Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell on guitar, Tony Garnier on bass and David Kemper on drums and percussion.

Shaw hoped to include this unreleased version on Volume 8 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, Tell Tale Signs.

And that was pretty funny, because the very last thing Bob did was raise the shaker up like 10db, making it ridiculously loud, and that was the mix he wanted to go with".

The lyrics make reference to "dancing lessons", "the jitterbug rag" and dressing "in drag", all of which feature in the plot of the film.

[10] Curtis Hanson, the director of Wonder Boys, has recalled: "I learned that Dylan might be interested in contributing an original song… So when I came back from filming in Pittsburgh, Bob came by the editing room to see some rough cut footage.

De Graaf notes the images of "the last train", "all hell may break loose", "standing on the gallows with my head in a noose", all contributing to a sense of impending Armageddon: "the last battle of the end times when all powers from hell will explode in one final outburst of violence".

[13] Dylan critic Michael Gray has commented on the wide range of cultural resources in the song's lyrics, describing it as unique in the way it synthesises the worlds of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Duane Eddy.

According to Gray, Eddy's producer Lee Hazlewood heard one Texan say to another, "Your girl has a face like forty miles of bad road", and immediately recognised the remark's potential as a song title.

He and his band performed the song in a segment recorded in Sydney, that was inserted into the Academy Awards broadcast via a satellite link.

The video appears on the bonus DVD included in the Limited Edition version of Dylan's 2006 album Modern Times.

In an article accompanying the list, critic Jacob Nierenberg noted that "'Things Have Changed' packages familiar themes—love gone wrong, the inevitability of time, Judgment Day—in a bluesy stomp that begins with Dylan receiving a lap dance from an assassin-eyed woman and peaks with him hauling another off in a wheelbarrow.

[19] Ultimate Classic Rock critic Matthew Wilkening rated it as the 2nd best song Dylan recorded between 1992 and 2011, saying that it "occupies a nearly perfect middle ground between 1997's pessimistic 'Time Out of Mind' and the then yet-to-be released, more hopeful 2001 album 'Love and Theft'.

"[20] The Guardian placed the song 14th on a list of "Bob Dylan's 50 Greatest Songs", calling it "superb" and saying that it sees Dylan "casting a jaundiced eye over a world he feels out of step with, its insistent, shuffling music a backdrop for a series of vibrant portents of impending doom, all dismissed with a grouchy shrug".

[22] Keith Negus, in a 2021 essay on Bob Dylan's single releases, praised his vocal performance on the track for being perfectly married to the subject matter of the song: "The deceptively quirky production of a lilting, minor-key, country-blues shuffle enhances the way Dylan delivers the lyrics in keeping with the character's world-weariness and increasingly stoned and cynical outlook.