"Bye and Bye" is a song written by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, released in 2001

2001 in music

See also:* 2001 in music Record labels established in 2001-Events:*January 1**Comeback of Guns N' Roses in House of Blues**Hum disbands.*January 17 – Bass player Jason Newsted leaves Metallica after 14 years with the band....

 as the fourth track on his album Love and Theft.

Musically, "Bye and Bye" is what Oliver Trager calls an "easygoing, lilting ballad...something one would expect from Leon Redbone

Leon Redbone

Leon Redbone is a singer and guitarist specializing in interpretations of early 20th-century music, including jazz and blues standards and Tin Pan Alley classics....

 or, from an earlier era, Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

. Some Dylanists have traced the musical source for 'Bye and Bye' to 'Having Myself a Time,' a song popularized by Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...

 and written by Leo Robin

Leo Robin

Leo Robin was an American composer, lyricist and songwriter. He is probably best known for collaborating with Ralph Rainger on the 1938 Oscar-winning song "Thanks for the Memory," sung by Bob Hope in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938.-Biography:Robin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and...

 and Ralph Rainger

Ralph Rainger

Ralph Rainger was an American composer of popular music principally for films.-Biography:Born Ralph Reichenthal in New York City, Rainger embarked on a legal career before escaping to Broadway where he became Clifton Webb's accompanist...

" (89).

Lyrically, however, "Bye and Bye" appears to have darker concerns. According to Trager again:

["Bye and Bye"] slowly gives way to the sentiments of a scary stalker. As Richard Harrington wrote in his September 16, 2001, Washington Post review of Love and Theft:

In "Bye and Bye," Dylan sings "The future for me is already past / You were my first love, you will be my last." Take him literally and it's about obsessional desire for a particular woman. But it's also about American roots music

Traditional music

Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...

and Dylan's abiding appreciation for it, and inspiration from it, over the course of half a century. (89)

Dylan performed "Bye and Bye" live regularly from early 2002 to late 2008.