Taking on Bob Dylan is never an easy assignment, given that they already carry so much personality in their original recordings. With his rendition of “Unbelievable,” Dave Miles makes the difficult choice of pulling the song far enough into his own musical world to justify returning to it. The result is a rockstar cover that goes beyond imitation without losing sight of the original that inspired it.
Originally released on Dylan’s 1990 album Under the Red Sky, “Unbelievable” is one of the record’s tougher, more direct rock songs. It drives forward on repetition while Dylan piles absurdities, frustrations and social observations on top of one another. Even within an album often regarded as one of Dylan’s lighter releases, the song has attracted its defenders for its relentless momentum and wonderfully strange lyricism.
It is also a natural song for Miles to tackle, as he approaches the song through the rock-oriented identity he has been developing across his recent releases. His
interpretation places the focus on the immediacy of the song, giving it even more attitude rather than an elaborate melodic structure.
The lyrics still remain the real attraction as Dylan’s writing moves between observations about money, society and human behaviour, repeatedly returning to the idea that what is happening around us has become almost impossible to believe. More than three decades after the song was written, that central idea has hardly become less relevant. If anything, hearing another artist revisit “Unbelievable” in 2026 gives its bewilderment a new context.
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There is also something refreshing about Miles choosing this Dylan song. “Unbelievable” is not one of the other standards that have been covered thousands of times. It comes from a period of Dylan’s career that remains divisive, and the choice to cover it shows us that Miles is getting comfortable within a classic singer-songwriter and rock framework.
As a cover, “Unbelievable” succeeds because it does not need to compete with Dylan. Instead, it functions as a salute to the songwriting that influenced Miles while fitting naturally into the straightforward, classic-rock-minded sound he has been building. For modern audiences, it offers an opportunity to revisit an overlooked corner of Dylan’s catalogue.