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NewAssumption4780 t1_j1ymask wrote

I mean, he can't sing, his harp hurts my ears and he's a mediocre guitarist. But, he was the first dude in the western rock world to write songs that weren't about heartbreak, teen love and other superficial themes geared towards kids. It was super obvious in retrospect but at the time it was ground breaking. The Beatles would switch from Twist and Shout to A Day in the Life. It shook up the world of rock. It was during Dylan that early Motown groups went from HDH's Baby Love archetype to Norman Whitfield's grittier Ball of Confusion.

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LosRiaso t1_j1ytyx9 wrote

>he was the first dude in the western rock world to write songs that weren't about heartbreak, teen love and other superficial themes geared towards kids.

Even if we go by your parameters of western rock, which I suppose Dylan could be considered post '65, that statement is still not remotely true. You're trying to re-write musical history without much knowledge of it, seemingly just to hype Bob Dylan beyond reason.

The idea that nobody in the west and/or in a rock band had ever written anything non-teenybopper before Dylan is just silly. MC5 were contemporaries of Bob Dylan ffs, the world wasn't just hold my hand and do the twist until a Woody Guthrie impersonator with delusions of grandeur showed up.

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