10. Bob Dylan
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, painter, and author. Born in Minnesota in 1941, Dylan had a tremendous impact on both popular music and culture. In the 1960s he became the voice, albeit reluctantly at times, of the generation. A lot of his lyrics incorporated philosophical, political, social, and literary references. He used these to challenge the accepted beliefs of American society.
Generally, Dylan used his music as a form of protest and to raise awareness of injustice in the United States. Songs such as “The Times They Are a-Changin” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” became influential in the anti-war and Civil Rights Movement. Further, ‘a song titled ‘The Death of Emmett Till’ also became particularly powerful among many Civil Rights Movement protestors. This song highlighted the plight of a young black man killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1955. Despite some white men confessing to their crimes, a jury found them innocent. Bob Dylan uses this case to show how entrenched the Jim Crow era still was and that injustice needs to be acknowledged.
Dylan’s political profile rose in May 1963. He wrote a song called “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”, criticizing the far-right fringe group named the John Birch Society (JBS). Mocking the group, a paranoid narrator in the song is convinced that communists are infiltrating the country and begins to search in all manner of places to route it out. CBS, however, informed him the song was potentially libellous to the John Birch Society and so could not be aired. Rather than comply with this level of censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show that evening.
His third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’ showed a more cynical and politicized Dylan. After a few more albums, and a huge wave of success, Dylan grew tired of being in the spotlight. In July 1966 he crashed his motorcycle in New York. To date, the extent of his injuries remain unknown but Dylan himself stated: “trust was that I wanted to get out of the rat race”. Following this crash, he withdrew from public view. Though he continued to release music and made a few public appearances, he did not tour again for nearly eight years.
Overall, Bob Dylan has led a very successful life. When it comes to awards, he has won eleven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power”. President Barack Obama awarded Dylan the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Last, but not least, in 2016 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.