About Bob Dylan
Robert Allen Zimmerman, known as Bob Dylan, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and poet, born May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. He is one of the major figures in world popular music. His most famous works date mainly from the 1960s. At one time, he was an informal chronicler of social unrest in the United States, with songs that were initially explicit, then increasingly allegorical, such as 'Masters of War,' 'Blowin' in the Wind,' 'The Times They Are a-Changin',' 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,' 'Gates of Eden,' 'All Along the Watchtower,' 'Ballad of a Thin Man,' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' (voted the greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine). Some of his songs, such as 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'The Times They Are a-Changin',' became anti-war anthems—particularly against the Vietnam War—and were adopted by the civic movements of the time. One of his most recent studio albums, 'Modern Times,' released in 2006, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart.Bob Dylan's inspiration for developing his art can be found not only in legendary American musicians such as Hank Williams (country), Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie (union musicians) and Robert Johnson (one of the founders of the blues), but also in writers of the Beat Generation, such as the poets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He also drew inspiration from the work of Arthur Rimbaud, to whom he has been compared, and that of playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht.
Complex, constantly evolving (on stage he regularly reinvents his standards), spanning different registers, from aggressive rock to ballads, and close to the social and cultural aspirations of the eras it has spanned, the work of Bob Dylan, which has contributed to the influence of American popular culture, was crowned on October 13, 2016 when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature 'for having created new poetic expressions in the great tradition of American song.'
Browse all Songs and Lyrics published on Bob Dylan
