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''Modern Times'' is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's 32nd studio album, released by Columbia Records in August 2006.

The album was Dylan's third straight (following ''Time out of Mind'' and ''Love and Theft'') to be met with nearly universal praise from fans and critics. It continued its predecessors' tendencies toward blues, rockabilly and pre-rock balladry, and was self-produced by Dylan under the pseudonym "Jack Frost". Along with the acclaim, the album sparked some debate over its uncredited use of choruses and arrangements from older songs, as well as many lyrical lines taken from the work of 19th century poet Henry Timrod.

''Modern Times'' became the singer-songwriter's first #1 album in the U.S. since 1976's ''Desire''. It was also his first album to debut at the summit of the Billboard 200, selling 191,933 copies in its first week. At age 65, Dylan became the oldest living person at the time to have an album enter the Billboard charts at number one. It also reached #1 in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland, debuted #2 in Germany, Austria and Sweden. It reached #3 in the UK and The Netherlands, respectively, and had sold over 4 million copies worldwide in its first two months of release. As with its two studio predecessors, the album's packaging features minimal credits and no lyric sheet. - Wikipedia

All rock stars are really just frustrated disc jockeys. Just ask Bob Dylan, whose new Theme Time Radio Hour, on XM Satellite Radio, allows the legend to familiarize audiences with his favorite tunes. Not that Bob's quit his day job: Though details about his first album in five years are being guarded as ferociously as your average nuclear secret, we suspect that Modern Times is as skeptical about our contemporary world as Chaplin's identically titled film was of his. But more importantly, we wonder if the songwriting will be as candid as the first volume of Dylan's memoirs, Chronicles, or the interviews he participated in for the Martin Scorsese doc, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. Dylan's worn a lot of masks over the years-that's how he communicates. But his latest may be his most enigmatic disguise yet-the mask of the everyday, straightforward, ordinary guy, hiding in plain sight.