This sober country waltz from Curtis Hanson's poker-tournament drama, Lucky You, is unlikely to net Dylan another Best Song Oscar. But "Huck's Tune" is a bleak beauty with liquid-mercury drips of steel guitar and at least one knockout lyric passage: "All the merry little elves/Can go hang themselves/My faith is as cold as can be," sung by Dylan in a perfectly crusty, malevolent whisper.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.