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Bob Dylan's influence on popular
music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered
several different schools of pop songwriting, from
confessional singer/songwriter to winding,
hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives. As a
vocalist, he broke down the notions that in order to
perform, a singer had to have a conventionally good
voice, thereby redefining the role of vocalist in
popular music. As a musician, he sparked several
genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock
and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip
of his achievements. Dylan's force was evident
during his height of popularity in the '60s — the
Beatles' shift toward introspective songwriting in
the mid-'60s never would have happened without him
— but his influence echoed throughout several
subsequent generations.
Many of his songs became popular standards, and his
best albums were undisputed classics of the rock
& roll canon. Dylan's influence throughout folk
music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal
turning point in its 20th-century evolution,
signifying when the genre moved away from
traditional songs and toward personal songwriting.
Even when his sales declined in the '80s and '90s,
Dylan's presence was calculable.
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