Bob Dylan among most notable Americans in history?

Subtitled, one more reason Doris Kearns Goodwin is a schmoe.
Geez, how would we all have made it this far without decent lyrics, bad singing and average musicianship?

Excerpts:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. president who won the Civil War and ended slavery, topped a list of the 100 most influential American figures in shaping U.S. history, a survey released on Tuesday said ...


More than 30 writers including Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were in the top 100. More contemporary figures included musician Bob Dylan, golfer Tiger Woods and consumer activist Ralph Nader. ...

Those who compiled the list included Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who said she looked for people "who made it possible for people to lead expanded lives -- materially, psychologically, culturally and spiritually."

 

Are you out of your mind, Twoback?

 

Did any Red Sox make the list?

 

Where was I? Top 50?

 

Hell yes, Dylan ought to make that list...along with either Elvis, Chuck Berry or Little Richard.

 

Where's the list, twobackey?

Got no problem with Dylan, even if he was a Bruce Sprinsgteen wannabe before his time.

 

No Ryan Sonner? Oh well. As long as Bob Seger wasn't on the list ahead of Dylan, I'm OK.

.

 

Got no problem with Dylan, on prinicple, but personally I'd rather hear fingernails against a chalkboard before his music.

 

Bob Dylan ... I never got it. Not even close.

 

Dylan, yes.
Tiger? WTF?

 

Good for you. The distinction here between personal taste and cultural relevance is an important one. There is really no one in the Western songwriting world who has an ouerve that compares to Dylan, both in quantity, longevity, and scope. A folk singer by heart, throughout his career he's been able to dabble and draw at various times from traditional folk, blues, jazz, country, rock - all traditional forms of American music - and run them all through his unique filter. He's moved from electric to acoustic and back again.

I'm a huge, huge, huge fan, but I'm also not someone who lock, stock and barrell buys the idea that ever lyric Dylan wrote is imbued with the gravity of a Shakespearean sonnet. The lyricism on "Blood on the Tracks," for example, is vastly overrated (some of it is just simple nursery rhyming). But no one has at least attempted to stretch the limits like him, at least not within a digestable framework (industrial fans will throw some East German guru at me who ran spoons clanking backward through a computer program or something. Not counting that).

"Visions of Johanna," "Like a Rolling Stone," "Gates of Eden," "It's Alright (Ma), I'm Only Bleeding" and "Desolation Row" are but a scant few examples of songs in which Dylan displayed how far someone could take a pop song and yet keep it a pop song.

He also has helped us solve the question of whether rock 'n' roll era stars can continue to be relevant into their 60s or beyond. We never knew before because the men and women of that era had not yet come of age until recently. We've always glorified the Jim Morrisons, Jimi Hendrixes and Kurt Cobains who died young. But Dylan's last three albums have shown that there is nobility in continuing to produce into senior citizenship, as well, perhaps moreso.

 

I feel bad for you both.
If you consider, as you must, that one of the great triumphs of America was the triumph of its popular culture, and specifically of its popular music, then Dylan belongs with Ellington and Armstrong and Gershwin and on and on.
and 85bears -- I love every single cut you cited, several of them more than probably is healthy, especially the word-riffy ones. But Blood On The Tracks is "vastly overrated" in much the same way as the Grand Canyon is.