Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and writer. Since releasing his first album in 1961, he has influenced popular music and culture for more than half a century, and his lyrics are widely regarded as his greatest achievement.

He rose to fame in the 1960s with protest folk songs and was often cast as a spokesman for the American counterculture of the time, a label he rejected. Early songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements. In the mid-1960s he moved toward rock, and his roughly six-minute 1965 single "Like a Rolling Stone" is credited with changing the traditional categories of popular music, though his use of rock elements drew criticism from parts of the folk movement.

His music draws on folk, blues, country, gospel, rock, rockabilly, English, Scottish and Irish folk, jazz and swing, and he typically plays guitar, keyboards and harmonica. Since the late 1980s he has toured almost continuously on what is known as the Never Ending Tour.

He has sold more than 100 million records, and since 1994 he has also published six books of drawings and paintings, with his artwork shown in major galleries. His honors include 12 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He received a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2008 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. In 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition, though he did not attend the ceremony that December.