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Did Barack Obama Inspire Bob Dylan to Bring Back Eighties Deep Cut ‘Silvio’ After 20 Years?

Bob Dylan played 1988's "Silvio" for the first time in 20 years on Friday, possibly because Barack Obama just named it one of his songs of the summer.

He hadn’t played it a single time in 20 years until it came back Friday night as the opening song of his set at an Outlaw Tour stop in Somerst, Wisconsin, in a new arrangement. “[Dylan] finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves,” Obama told Rolling Stone in 2010. The return of “Silvio” to the set is reminiscent of Dylan’s decision to bring “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” back after a seven-year break last month, just 11 days after it appeared in the trailer for his upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown.

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