Bob Dylan: 20 best lyrics

Bob Dylan, America's celebrated bard, was born on May 24, 1941. The world of popular music can be measured in two distinct periods, B.D. and After Dylan. He altered the way we think about lyrics – in form, content, and their potential to literally change the world.

Dylan has won many awards throughout his 50-year career, including 11 Grammy Awards, one Academy Award and one Golden Globe Award; he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of FameNashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008 Dylan was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation "for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power" and in 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for having "created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

To honor the man on his special day, we submit our top 20 favorite Dylan lyrics.

1. 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

(1963)

1 of 20

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.