When Timothée Chalamet hosted Saturday Night Live on January 25, 2025, he also performed as the musical guest. Instead of building the set around Bob Dylan’s best-known songs—or the most recognizable material associated with A Complete Unknown—he chose three personal favorites: “Outlaw Blues,” “Three Angels,” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” Their contrasting arrangements traced several sides of Dylan’s catalog and revealed what Chalamet had spent years learning for his role.
Which Bob Dylan songs did Timothée Chalamet sing on SNL?
Chalamet performed three Dylan songs during the January 25, 2025 episode, on which he pulled double duty as host and musical guest:
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- “Outlaw Blues,” from Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home
- “Three Angels,” from the 1970 album New Morning
- “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” performed as a solo acoustic number
The first two songs appeared in one staged musical sequence. “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” arrived later as a separate performance on guitar.
Why did Chalamet pick these Dylan songs?
The selections functioned less like a conventional movie-promotion medley than a small tour through Dylan’s catalog. Contemporary coverage described them as deep cuts and reported that Chalamet considered them personal favorites. None is the obvious choice for a short television showcase, which made the set feel like an expression of taste rather than a replay of the songs audiences might expect from a Dylan biopic.
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Together, the songs jump between periods and musical identities: the electric blues of Bringing It All Back Home, the spare and eccentric writing of New Morning, and the intimate acoustic tradition surrounding “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” The sequence therefore emphasized interpretation—how Chalamet could inhabit different Dylan modes—over familiarity.
How the three SNL performances differed
| Song | Catalog context | SNL arrangement | Defining performance choice |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Outlaw Blues” | Bringing It All Back Home (1965) | Full band | An energetic, electric-era blues treatment |
| “Three Angels” | New Morning (1970) | Keys and vocals from James Blake | Chalamet delivered the words in a measured, spoken style |
| “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” | Dylan song performed acoustically | Solo guitar | A quieter, stripped-down presentation |
“Outlaw Blues”: the full-band opening
“Outlaw Blues” supplied the most overtly driving section of the set. Its origin on Bringing It All Back Home placed Chalamet in Dylan’s mid-1960s electric period, and the SNL staging used a full band to preserve that energy.
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“Three Angels”: spoken delivery with James Blake
The mood changed sharply for “Three Angels,” a track from New Morning. Chalamet sat beside James Blake, who played keyboard and contributed vocals. Rather than treating the lyric as a conventional pop vocal, Chalamet delivered it in a deliberately measured, spoken manner. The arrangement made the song’s unusual narrative quality central.
“Tomorrow Is a Long Time”: an acoustic close
For the second musical break, Chalamet moved to acoustic guitar for “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” The Atlantic has noted that the song is sometimes associated with Elvis Presley’s cover, but Chalamet’s SNL performance foregrounded the quieter Dylan composition itself and ended the night on an intimate scale.
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Chalamet’s choices were credible because his preparation for A Complete Unknown extended far beyond memorizing a few famous songs. In a 60 Minutes interview, he said he had never approached a role with the same intensity because of his respect for the material. Pandemic disruption and other film commitments left him roughly five years to study Dylan and his music.
For the film, Chalamet pre-recorded the songs and then chose to sing and play live in the movie. That production decision should not be treated as evidence about the technical recording setup of the SNL performances; the two projects had different circumstances.
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More than 50 guitar sessions with Larry Saltzman
Guitar teacher Larry Saltzman began working with Chalamet in 2018. The Associated Press reported more than 50 sessions, including remote lessons during the pandemic. Saltzman concentrated on the playing of “pre-electric Bob” and taught Chalamet songs that ultimately did not appear in the film.
Chalamet described the relationship this way: “Sometime in 2018 I had my first lesson with this great guitar teacher named Larry Saltzman who at some point became less of a teacher and more a co-sanity artist through COVID.” He also recalled, “We would Zoom three, four times a week and doing songs that never made it into the movie.”
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That history helps explain why an acoustic performance and less familiar repertoire were realistic options for a television appearance. It does not establish that Saltzman arranged or rehearsed the SNL set.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the set says about A Complete Unknown
The SNL appearance took place during the awards-season release window for A Complete Unknown, in which Chalamet portrayed Dylan. Yet the music choices did not simply advertise the film’s most recognizable moments. They showed a performer drawing on a broad study of Dylan: electric blues, spoken-word-like phrasing, keyboard accompaniment and finger-on-string intimacy all appeared within one episode.
That breadth is the useful connection to the film. Chalamet had spent years learning the musician’s repertoire and physical approach, but the SNL set allowed him to select songs for their personal and musical possibilities rather than for plot recognition.
SNL already had a Dylan connection
The performance also has a modest historical echo. Dylan himself appeared as SNL’s musical guest in 1979 and performed three songs from Slow Train Coming. Chalamet’s 2025 appearance was not the program’s first Dylan-related musical moment, and the two appearances should not be treated as artistically equivalent. The link is simply that the same stage has hosted Dylan’s own performance and, decades later, an actor’s interpretations of his work.
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To follow the songs back to their albums, start with Bringing It All Back Home for “Outlaw Blues” and New Morning for “Three Angels.” “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” can then serve as a bridge into Dylan’s acoustic writing and the many later interpretations that helped make the song familiar beyond its original context.
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