i appreciate Dylan's songwriting, but that is it. i prefer covers to his versions. check out 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'. by THEM.

his voice is grating and his lyrics can be great, but are often nonsense.

i like Joni Mitchell's take on him: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-reason-joni-mitchell-hated-performing-with-bob-dylan/

'Furthermore, in 2013, Mitchell fired shots once more, this time while in discussion with CBC. She brutally commented, “Musically, Dylan’s not very gifted; he’s borrowed his voice from old hillbillies. He’s got a lot of borrowed things. He’s not a great guitar player. He’s invented a character to deliver his songs, it’s a mask of sorts”.'

(psst, Joni should win the Nobel--her lyrics are spectacular.)

The answer my friend… is blowing in the wind

I mean, he can't sing, his harp hurts my ears and he's a mediocre guitarist. But, he was the first dude in the western rock world to write songs that weren't about heartbreak, teen love and other superficial themes geared towards kids. It was super obvious in retrospect but at the time it was ground breaking. The Beatles would switch from Twist and Shout to A Day in the Life. It shook up the world of rock. It was during Dylan that early Motown groups went from HDH's Baby Love archetype to Norman Whitfield's grittier Ball of Confusion.

Dylan 100% laughs at people who idolize him, and a couple of his songs are just pretentious (and/or cheeky) name checking (Desolation Row- pretentious. Highway 61-cheeky)... but most of his best and most prominent work are diss tracks? (Like A Rolling Stone, Ballad of A Thin Man, Idiot Wind, Positively 4th Street etc.). It isn't hard to tell what they're about at all. They're just colorful. He also writes a lot of love songs- some of which bother to depict human nuance (Others are just creepy, and may reflect crimes he in fact committed?). Also- not hard to decipher- just less blunt than the lyrics of the jingles the Beatles were writing in 1964.

It's okay to dislike things that are well made. I don't like To Pimp A Butterfly. Good kid, m.A.A.d. city is fantastic, but I can't make myself enjoy TPAB. I don't feel the need to try and convince myself that it's secretly tricking people into thinking it's smarter than it is. It's just not my taste.

All the answers saying “yes he was talented”: irrelevant. All the answers saying “no he wasn’t talented”: irrelevant. All the answers saying: “He was the first to do x, y & z”: irrelevant.

Well, not irrelevant… but these things need to be discussed objectively.

There are so many “what’s the big deal with x, I don’t get it” questions on Reddit, and the only useful answers should be objective ones which begin with a) an admission that x was a big deal [or a refutation of the claim that it was a big deal], followed by b) a theory as to why it was a big deal.

These are sociological questions about why certain things tapped the zeitgeist.

Whether Dylan was a good or bad musician is only relevant with regard to the cultural context [consider for example that maybe some people enjoyed the wobbly musicianship; much like people did with punk a couple of decades later].

Whether Dylan’s lyrics are nonsensical trolling or earnest artistic explorations is irrelevant — the question is why did people respond to these lyrics.

There are so many factors involved. And keep in mind that not every Dylan fan in the ‘60s was a Dylan fan for the same reasons. Fans’ reasons for liking anything should be considered to exist on a Venn diagram [some fans maybe liked the audacity of Dylan’s cryptic lyrics but didn’t care if they were nonsense or not; other fans maybe liked Dylan’s lyrics because they felt they were able to decipher the true meanings of them]

Blowin’ in the Wind

Girl from the North Country

A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall

Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright

the Times They Are A-Changin’

Lay, Lady, Lay

All Along The Watchtower

Hurricane

Just Like a Woman

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Shelter From the Storm

Like a Rolling Stone

If Not For You

Tangled Up In Blue

Edit: Also Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door

Honestly I could go on and on, but surely this proves that he had some talent at least

Dylan....a freaking genius

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Try Blood on the Tracks.

I think that his best work is The Traveling Wilburys

https://youtu.be/9u5x9pdInTU

The best description of Dylan I ever heard was “you either get it or you don’t”. For the people who “get it” Dylan strikes a deep chord, or as Van Ronk said in the Scorsese documentary, “if you believe in such a thing, Dylan tapped into the collective unconscious”. For those who don’t “get it”, Dylan’s popularity is confusing as hell.

First off, its ok to not like something even if "everyone" seems to. Secondly, Dylan's lyrics (in his hay day) were often topical commentary on political and social events of the time. They aren't laid out in a direct way that someone without the cultural context would have an easy time connecting the dots of meaning. Finally, Dylan (especially early career) was a poetic lyricist who often expressed abstract ideas in vague ways that left things up to interpretation. Just like some of the best non-musical poetry/prose. Whether Dylan did it as a deliberate stroke of genius or stoned accident is debatable. As is whether the outcome is high art or pretentious dribble. You'll find scores that will agree with whatever take you choose to adopt.

Me neither. I understand he was a big thing when he was young because of the lyrics. But his voice isn’t appealing to me at all. You are definitely not alone

Knocking on heaven’s door is one of his most covered songs. Also “like a rolling stone”. He doesn’t speak to me that much either

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Dylan can smell colors you can't even hear!

No you're absolutely right. Bob Dylan sucks and I think he's one of those guys that found what worked for him and ran with it. REM and Red Hot Chili Peppers are kind of the same in my opinion both found huge success with borderline nonsense lyrics and ran with it. The two most acclaimed aspects of Bob Dylan are his cryptic and prolific lyrics and his "unusual" voice, both are really terrible and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of fans are just there because they feel they should like his music. I feel like certain artists are just gatekeeping fodder; Bob Marley, Radiohead, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Weezer, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen and so on. Not saying all these artists are bad but there are certain artists that are "you gotta listen to" artists where some gatekeeping friend tells you if you like X genre/artist then you HAVE to like X band because that's their biggest influence or they MADE that scene. And some kid forces themselves to listen to whoever and either reluctantly does so or legitimately falls in love with it but under the pretence that it is somehow imperative that they do so. I've seen plenty of posts here asking how do I like The Beatles, all my friends like them but I just don't get it can someone help me (no joke, I've seen this). Or my friend told me I should like jazz but I'm not really into it. And I feel Dylan is one of those institutions that may have once been seriously radical but is now just not a big deal. Like good comedy used to be a piano falling now it doesn't get a chuckle Bob Dylan probably did mean something but what does he have on new innovation like blazing fast guitar solos and hip hop and a metal band playing instrumental trap music, Run The Jewels? Not much, he sucks and that's ok.

Bob Dylan is high art. Most of it doesn’t really satisfy casual listeners. It’s like when you go to a museum despite not understanding art history. Hopefully you can appreciate some of it, but there is going to be a lot of work that doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand all of Dylan myself, but I can understand it enough to know it’s special.

Also, listen to it stoned if you haven’t.