Just yesterday, 75-year-old American music legend and cultural icon Bob Dylan was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature for creating “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. Armed with a humble guitar and harmonica, Bob wrote songs that spoke to the common man and captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s.
And he is still relevant today! The fact that he’s still making music and touring today is in itself pretty legendary.
He may not have the best vocals but his lyrics, passion and craft have inspired, and continue to inspire, generations of musicians and listeners. In fact, the list of great musicians Bob Dylan has inspired range from The Beatles to Neil Young – his legacy on global culture is pretty much set in stone.
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Here are 10 of Bob Dylan’s greatest lyrics that prove he deserves the Nobel prize:
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ‘n how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ‘n how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
– FromThe Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)
Watch his live performance of the song below:
May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young.
– From Planet Waves (1963)
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
– From The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964)
When you’re standing on the cross-roads
That you cannot comprehend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all your dreams have vanished
And you don’t know what’s up the bend
Just remember that death is not the end.
– From Down In The Groove (1988)
When the rain is blowin’ in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love.
– From Time Out Of Mind (1997)
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness?
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.
– From The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you.
– From Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
– From Bringing All Back Home (1965)
People starving and thirsting, grain elevators are bursting
Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it do to give it
They say loose your inhibitions, follow your own ambitions
They talk about a life of brotherly love, show me someone who knows how to live it
There’s slow, slow train coming up around the bend.
– From Slow Train Coming (1979)
When somebody loves you
It’s no good unless he loves you all the way
Happy to be near you
When you need someone to cheer you all the way
Taller than the tallest tree is
That’s how it’s got to feel
Deeper than the deep blue sea is
That’s how deep it goes if it’s real.
– From Fallen Angels (2016)
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