Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan sold tens of millions of albums, wrote more than 500 songs recorded by more than 2,000 artists, performed worldwide, and set the standard for lyric writing. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 "for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Dylan failed to attend the December ceremony, citing previous commitments

Allen Ginsberg called him the greatest poet of the second half of the 20th Century, and former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion said he listens to Dylan almost daily.

Shakespeare wrote plays that later became literature, and Dylan wrote songs that later became poems or perhaps literature; he was also the first 'rock star' to publish all his lyrics as a book. He has written over 100 books.