Bob Dylan

Everybody, even the people who hate him, pretty much agrees that Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter of all time. Some will attach asterisks to the moniker (*living/rock/American/white/male) but it’s a waste of time. Fundamentally, Dylan expanded the scope of what a pop song could be, demolished cutesy lyrical boundaries, pioneered genre bending sounds and changed the way record companies thought about artists to the point where his impact is so ubiquitous it’s hard to separate him from the evolution of music. And he did it all in like three years. Dylan’s catalogue isn’t only winners, in fact lots of it is bad, but his best work is so monumental, and driven by an irrepressible fuck-you-attitude, that it makes most other music feel small by comparison.