Lyric
http://bobdylan.com/songs/tonight.html
Throw my ticket out the window,
Throw my suitcase out there, too,
Throw my troubles out the door,
I don't need them any more
'Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you.
I should have left this town this morning
But it was more than I could do.
Oh, your love comes on so strong
And I've waited all day long
For tonight when I'll be staying here with you.
Is it really any wonder
The love that a stranger might receive.
You cast your spell and I went under,
I find it so difficult to leave.
I can hear that whistle blowin',
I see that stationmaster, too,
If there's a poor boy on the street,
Then let him have my seat
'Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you.
Throw my ticket out the window,
Throw my suitcase out there, too,
Throw my troubles out the door,
I don't need them any more
'Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you.
Discussion
This song was first released on the album Nashville Skyline (Columbia Records1969), but I got into it listening to my Dad's old vinyl copy of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2.
The story that the song tells is a good and simple one: a man1 is obliged, perhaps by work, to leave town. As he waits for the train, having said goodbye to his sweetheart, he realises that he cannot bear to leave her, and abandons his journey. He turns up back at her door that evening, and they live happily ever after.
There are many different ways that this story could be told - the quick run-through in the previous paragraph is one of these. Another approach might be to tell the story in its linear form, making a bit more of a poetic job than I have, either in the form of a song, a poem, or a short story. The downfall of this approach is that it relies on the story building up to the emotional climax, the point at which the man returns to his lover's door. Once one has heard the story a couple of times, there is no build up or surprise, and some of the power is lost.
Dylan's approach is to stay with that climactic moment, and describe it in great detail. The whole song takes place in that moment, glancing back and forward form there. Since this point can be said to be the nucleus of the story - the focus of any telling - Dylan's approach is a very pure one, and it enables the song to retain its power and emotion even after repeated listens.
1 I've said that the narrator is a man, and that his lover is a woman. Dylan is not so crude, and there is nothing in the lyric to establish the sex of either party.