If you had to pick one person, who do you think would be the most influential singer/songwriter in American music?
I was having this discussion with some other friends, and wanted to post it here to see what people would say.
For me, the title easily goes to Bob Dylan.
A few months ago, President Obama called Bob Dylan this while awarding him the Medal of Freedom. As a big Dylan fan, I'm inclined to agree.
Dylan started in the early 60's by bringing folk music, which often discussed issues of social relevance, to mainstream America. From this spawned a myriad of admirers, copycats (Donovan), and ensembles, like Peter Paul & Mary, who would play "nice" versions of Dylan songs, i.e. "Blowing in the Wind" or "The Times They Are A'Changing". There was a folk music movement in the early 60's, with Dylan at the center. By 1965, he'd turned his back on all that and written what many fans consider to be his two best albums,
Highway 61 Revisited and
Blonde on Blonde, where he was among the first artists to combine hard rock with complex, philosophical, and deeply metaphorical lyrics. "Like a Rolling Stone" became an iconic song representing just how quickly the idealism of the 60's denigrated into bitter cynicism, paving the way for the harder-edged 70's. There's a quote somewhere that goes something like, "the Beatles proved rock could be art; Dylan proved it could be poetry." And that I think is the most rewarding characteristic of Dylan's music of all-- he's always been an average singer and average guitar player, but his songs and specifically his lyrics never fail to resonate with listeners.
Dylan changed after the 60's. He got married, kicked heroine, had kids, became a recluse and released a series of rustic and heavily country/western-influenced albums. While not usually considered his best period of work, some of his most enduring songs, like "Knocking on Heaven's Door" and "All Along The Watchtower", come from this era, later made famous by Guns 'n Roses and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. He's also wrote "Forever Young" for his son, which is a nice song a lot of people like. Then, by the mid 70s, his marriage had gone to shit. Dylan went back to the road. Amid his divorce, he wrote
Blood on the Tracks, which is almost a case-study on love and heartache in musical form and what many consider to be his best work, with "Tangled Up in Blue" his best song. Jeff Buckley did a great cover of "If You See Her Say Hello" (he covered many other Dylan songs, too) And more recently, "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" has been made famous by... well.. Miley Cyrus
Dylan has been writing relevant, influential music for 5 decades now, and he shows no signs of stopping. There are certainly a myriad of other highly influential artists from the 60's, just as there are certainly (several) weak spots in Dylan's 35-studio album discography. But, among them, Dylan was one of few was able to come out from the 60's and move on to do other things. And I can not think of one decade of music since Dylan whose greatest artists have not been influenced by his music and lyrics in some concrete way.
Topic: The single most influential singer/songwriter in American music (Read 2468 times)