"Slow Train" is a song written by Bob Dylan that first appeared on his 1979 album Slow Train Coming. In the United States, it was released as the follow up single to "Gotta Serve Somebody." It was also released as the lead song from Dylan's 1989 live album with the Grateful Dead, Dylan & the Dead. Music critic Paul Williams has called it "the one track [on Slow Train Coming] that must be listened to again and again and again, inexhaustible, essential." Rolling Stone Magazine editor Jann Wenner has called it "nothing less than Dylan's most mature and profound song about America."

"Slow Train" has an earlier genesis than most of the songs on Slow Train Coming. It began life as an instrumental Dylan used to warm up with on tour in late 1978. A recording of the song with some lyrics exists from a soundcheck of a December 2, 1978 show in Nashville, Tennessee, although only the chorus and a few lines from that version were retained on the ultimate recording. A studio demo was recorded in April 1979, and the album version was recorded on May 3, 1979, at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Alabama. Dylan previously used the symbol of a holy slow train in the liner notes to his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited: "the subject matter – though meaningless as it is – has something to do with a holy slow train."

"Slow Train" styled along the lines of Dylan's great finger-pointing protest songs, but now Dylan's moral outrage is fueled by his recent conversion to Christianity. Targets of Dylan's outrage include himself, his friends, OPEC, false leaders, injustice, greed, poverty, conformity and hypocrisy, including religious hypocrisy. Although most of the songs on Slow Train Coming explicitly referenced Dylan's recent conversion, "Slow Train" was indirect and metaphorical. And unlike many songs on the album it has no explicit biblical references and only a single reference to Satan.

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