Folk musicians of that time mostly performed songs from America’s past. However, Dylan began to write his own music. After his classic “The Times They are A-Changin'” from 1963, the public increasingly associated Dylan with the left wing social movements of the time.

Critic and social commentator Greil Marcus, who has written extensively about the artist, says Dylan songs often transcend their genre, expressing the tension between the topical and the mythical, the ancient and the everyday.

“And sometimes, when that tension is held in perfect balance, you get work of extraordinary - not just depth, not just beauty, not just allure - but uniqueness. When you hear it, you say ‘I can’t imagine anyone else coming up with this.’”

Blending poetry and music

Dylan was an innovator in other ways, too. In “Tambourine Man,” for example, his imagery becomes personal and inward looking, an approach nearly unheard of in the pop music of the era.

Michael Gray, who wrote “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia,” says Dylan was one the first songwriters to marry great poetry with the primal power of rock and roll.

”So that after him... you were free to be as creative and as serious as you wished to be, and as you were capable of being within popular music," says Gray. "It was no longer necessarily an intrinsic part of the form to be trivial or shallow.”

Even John Lennon once remarked that Dylan’s lyrics made it possible for the Beatles to evolve from a boy band to something far more adult.