'Hurricane' always gives me chills.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_(Bob_Dylan_song)

Here's a great video on 'All Along The Watchtower'. I'm rewatching this today to celebrate!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In6gCrGeZfA

+ 1 for 'Hurricane' - great song!

Agreed, another +1 for Hurricane. A largely-overlooked absolute classic. And of course All Along the Watchtower!

I read the lyrics to Dylan's Forever Young at my nephews baptism as a poem, and half the audience was crying. Excerpt:

May you grow up to be righteous

May you grow up to be true

May you always know the truth

And see the lights surrounding you

May you always be courageous

Stand upright and be strong

May you stay forever young

May you stay forever young.

I play this song for my kids, and I have a hard time not internalizing it myself. It's one of my favorites.

That’s beautiful. I’m thinking I should steal this idea and translate it to Swedish for the next baptism in my family.

To me it's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"

"He not busy being born is busy dying" must be one of greatest lines ever.

"While money doesn't talk, it swears"

Rhyming "imagination" with "tax-deductible charity organizations" is worthy of a Nobel any day.

Technically, Dylan has written a number of novels, short stories and Poems and as such would not really qualify as a "pure singer-songwriter", even though the Nobel Prize comittee's reasoning references his work as a singer-songwriter...

I would suggest 'Visions of Johanna'.

At the other end of spectrum is 'Changing of the Guards' in which Bob Dylan seems to be intentionally parodying his own songwriting (still an enjoyable song though).

>"Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts": an amazing example of musical story-telling

This song and 'Tangled Up In Blue' and 'Hurricane' are practically novellas in song form. I think the 'long form storyteller' Dylan is often the least acknowledged, but probably my favorite Dylan song format.

I started typing out a list, but there's really too many to name. Pretty much anything through Desire is definitely worth a listen, and he has some gems from past that period, too.

Winston Churchill also won the Literature Nobel Prize (for his book on the second world war). Writing history is probably even better than songwriting as an alternative to fiction.

"Only a Pawn in Their Game" has always been super impressive to me.