Select a popular music artist active between 1950 and the present. Bob Dylan.

Popular Music
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Popular Music
Born in 1941, Bob Dylan is a musician and songwriter whose great influence is known all over the world. As a folk-rock singer and songwriter, Dylan is widely known for coming up with songs that seek to address political and social issues in America and the world as a whole. Some of his most influential songs include “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, “Hurricane”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Blowin’ In The Wind”, just to mention a few. Out of his works, the most renowned song is “Like a Rolling Stone” and this is famous for its lyrics that were written intentionally to address various issues in the society during the period. Generally, the “Like a Rolling Stone” song that was written in 1965 is an informative and confrontational song that communicates the ideas of love, loneliness and the consequences of living a sinful life through its carefully written lyrics. Overall, Dylan was concerned with social issues and sought to express them in music. With this in mind, this paper therefore aims to investigate the reasons why the artist and this song belong to the rock-and-roll era, its historical significance and why the song matters.
In order to understand Bob Dylan and his style of music particularly in ‘Like a Rolling Stone”, it is important to begin with the background information on the artist. Bob Dylan was born in the year 1941 in Minnesota, USA, and his influence in the popular music of the 20th century is quite immense. As a singer and songwriter, his song lyrics have been termed as being extraordinary and of high literary quality (Kastner, 2015). He began his musical career as a folk musician but later on in the 1960’s he shifted to rock and roll and his works from this time incorporated and combined the lyrics, styles and elements of both folk and rock and roll. In effect, he became known as the inventor of a new style of music known as folk-rock. The messages in most of his songs revolve around the subjects of romance, politics, and class divisions. The musician has written more than 500 songs and has managed to sell millions of albums throughout the world. Some of his notable works include, “Blowin’ in the wind”, “Time Out of Mind”, “Blonde on Blonde”, “The Basement Tapes”, and “Like a Rolling Stone.” Dylan’s great talent in writing and literature in general has seen him win many awards such as the 2016 Nobel Prize, the Grammy Awards of 1994, 1997, 2001 and 2006, and the Presidential Medal Of Freedom award in the year 2012. His folk-rock music, which was labeled as protest and rebellious music, contributed to the division between parents and children in the 1960s since he sought to break free from the normal rules that guided the American society then. Bob Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone” marked a change in his career as he shifted from the protesting lyrics he used in folk and reverted to more serious rock music with a great social intent.
A number of reasons exist as to why Bob Dylan and his “Like a Rolling Stone” song should be covered under the genre of Rock and Roll Era and Beyond. To begin with, Gilmore (1990), points out that Bob Dylan invented the folk-rock. Earlier in the 1950’s rock and roll music was considered a rebellious form of music that the youths preferred. However, with the coming of Dylan, most of the rebellious notions were dropped and through his influential music, he was able to reinvent the genre to create folk-rock music for which he is known. Apart from this, Dylan also wrote other songs that clearly set him out as a rock and roll musician. A good example in this case is his song “Like a Rolling Stone” that bore most of the elements of hardened rock in terms of style and musical elements. Dylan is also said to change from the usual folk songs and began to use electric instruments in a move that saw him join the world of rock. However, as it is noted, in the 1960’s, Dylan was fond of mixing different genres of music and for this reason, his performances usually involved a combination of folk and electric sets.
Bob Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone” is amongst the songs that saw Dylan join the rock and roll genre of music while still maintaining his ties with folk music. This led to the song to combine the elements of both folk music and rock music in what came to be known as the folk-rock genre. The leading reason why this song qualifies to be in the rock and roll genre is the fact that it used a combination of most of the musical elements usually associated with the genre. For instance, there is an organ, electric guitar, the bass, the piano, and the drums, which are all instruments used in rock and roll (Marcus, 2005). Accordingly, a good number of his other songs that came after “Like a Rolling Stone” also took the same direction involving the use of these instruments. The other important reason why this song is appropriate for the mentioned era and beyond is the fact that just like in rock and roll, the singing starts before the instruments follow (Basso,2019). In essence, this rock and roll feature helps in making the song a revolutionary one because before that, instruments began while the singing followed.
There is no doubt that the song “Like a Rolling Stone” has a strong historical significance. Evidently, during the time, the American society had social rules that were well established and the youths were expected to live by these rules. Considering this, Dylan’s song signified the search for freedom or an attempt to break free from those rules that threatened the way of life of the people (Basso, 2019). It is also noted that the generation of the time was quite restless following the many changes that were taking place in America at the time. Therefore, the song “Like a Rolling Stone” was trying to address these uncertainties. This is evident from the fact that the song talks about a lonely girl who was once associated with wealth, but her poor decisions lead her back to poverty. Arguably, the song can equally be said to represen...