"Positively 4th Street" (Bob Dylan)

There's still a lot of speculation about what/who "Positively 4th Street" is all about.  I think it's pretty obvious that it was Bob Dylan's rebuttal to his detractors for "going electric."

Let's check out the timeline: Dylan started toying with mixing folk and rock in 1964, moving away from the acoustic protest songs, like "Blowin' in the Wind," that had earned him renown and respect in the folk music community.  The initial product of his folk-rock experiments was the half electric, half acoustic March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, which garnered mixed reactions among his folk music fans.  Not long after, Dylan released the sprawling rock single "Like A Rolling Stone" on July 20.  Five days after the release of "Like A Rolling Stone," Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, RI, on July 25, where he decided at the last moment to play an electric set.  

And he got booed.  

Some Dylan contemporaries and fans postulate it's because his set was too short or the sound quality was poor.  Others (including Dylan) contend that it was because his new, electric sound had pissed off traditionalists in the folk community.  Whatever the case, the crowd reaction cut Dylan to the quick: the very people who were so ready to claim him as the folk movement's poster child one moment had suddenly and nastily turned on him the next (as you can see in this trailer for the 2007 documentary The Other Side of the Mirror).

His very next single was the acerbic "Positively 4th Street," released September 6, 1965.

Musically, the song floats along on a sublime, upbeat melody with bright splashes of organ and slightly-distorted rhythm guitar, courtesy of Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, who'd both performed with Dylan at Newport.

Lyrically, it's napalm.  The words come off as if he's berating a single individual, and—in a sense—he is.  The subject of his derision is symbolically "4th Street," which most certainly refers to West 4th Street in New York's Greenwich Village—the geographic center of the folk movement where Dylan got his start.  His vitriol is aimed squarely at the community he feels stabbed him in the back after he "went electric."  He cries foul that "folkies" were genuinely hurt and disillusioned by his stylistic shift, telling them You have no faith to lose, and you know it.  He also points out that the community still wants to claim him as its own, using his success for its own ends, but then never hesitates to disparage his mainstream acceptance.  You just want to be on the side that's winning...
It's Dylan at his thrifty, snarky, direct best.