In the late '70s, Dylan started a trilogy of Christian rock albums

Bob Dylan often reworks his vocal melodies, even for his classic songs

Bob Dylan is an unpredictable live artist willing to reinvent his classics as they age. This analysis by Steven Rings, a music professor, breaks down the evolution of the singing style in "A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall," which transformed in one 1994 performance and then continued growing.

In the 2000s, Dylan began hosting a weekly radio show

Bob Dylan remained unpredictable, even 40 years into his career. Look no further than his satellite radio show from the 2000s, which found the legendary singer-songwriter riffing on a different theme every week. In this episode that theme is “Nothing.” He talks about Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin’ but a G Thang,” quotes several lines from Shakespeare, and speaks at length about his love for the musical “Porgy and Bess.” It’s a wild, unpredictable ride, just like the rest of his career.

Dylan's raucous 1976 tour was one piece of an ongoing reinvention

In the mid-70s, Dylan assembled a ragtag group of musicians and poets—including Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Allen Ginsberg—he called the Rolling Thunder Revue. Rather than playing stadiums in major markets, they played smaller venues in smaller cities for a more intimate experience. The tour yielded some of the most exuberant versions of Dylan songs, captured in this 1976 performance in Fort Collins, which originally aired on NBC as “Hard Rain.”

80 artists on their favorite Bob Dylan songs

Listen to any rock music from the past century and you’ll likely hear some trace of Dylan’s influence. This massive list, released back on Dylan’s 80th birthday, offers objective data to back that up. Its 80 participants include David Byrne, Michael McDonald, and dozens more. The best part? The article also includes a playlist, so you can listen to the songs while you read about their impact.

Bob Dylan's 'Never Ending Tour' has racked up close to 3,000 dates

Since 1987, Bob Dylan and his band (featuring a range of rotating members) have toured venues of various sizes on what fans have come to call "The Never Ending Tour." This is thanks to the legendary artist's abundance of dates and lack of demarcation between one tour and the next.

In 1984, Dylan began experimenting with punk

When Bob Dylan was asked to appear on David Letterman’s relatively new late-night show, he decided to call an audible. He’d been intrigued by LA’s exploding post-punk scene and had spent time jamming with one of its bands, the Plugz, whom he decided to bring to Letterman as his backing band. The appearance sounds unlike anything else in his catalog and is one of his more fascinating creative reinventions in a career loaded with them.

Dylan influenced many of his contemporaries

Dylan’s groundbreaking approach to songwriting didn’t just change his career; it changed the trajectory of American popular music. This podcast from the National Association of Music Merchants’ oral history project features interviews with several Dylan compatriots and fans–including Pete Seeger, Emmylou Harris, and Robbie Robertson–who detail how Dylan changed their careers and how they viewed songwriting.

Dylan was called 'the voice of his generation,' but rejected the title

By the mid-60s, Dylan made it clear he had no desire to be a spokesman for anyone but himself. He found the title stifling and believed it would prevent him from creating authentic art.

Dylan's early records were socially conscious folk songs

Dylan's early records were modeled after his heroes Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, meaning they were often acoustic numbers filled with lyrical wordplay and political themes. "Masters of War," from 1963's "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," is a perfect example of the form, railing against politicians and war profiteers.

Dylan's 1965 electric set at the Newport Folk Festival was viewed by some as a betrayal

It's considered a watershed moment in his career and rock ‘n’ roll history, mostly because the audience allegedly booed Dylan’s new electrified songs, believing he had abandoned politically minded folk music for pop stardom.

In 1966, Dylan was in a motorcycle accident

At the height of his popularity, Bob Dylan disappeared. The press reported it was due to a near-fatal motorcycle accident, though specifics were never provided. When he returned some time later, with a new album and sound, Dylan fans treated the accident as a pivotal moment in the legendary artist's career. But there's ample proof the accident never happened and, at its core, was little more than a cover story for a burnt-out rock star.

In the late '80s, Dylan formed the Traveling Wilburys with other rock legends

The word “supergroup” gets tossed around plenty in rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s never been more apt than with the Traveling Wilburys, a late '80s band featuring Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne. At the time, Dylan was feeling creatively adrift and far removed from the passion of his earlier work. The winking alter-egos of the Wilburys reinvigorated him, leading to a great record and a renaissance in Dylan’s solo career.

A deep dive into Bob Dylan's 'memoir'

Bob Dylan's "Chronicles: Volume One" is part memoir and part novel, a book that intentionally blurs the line between Dylan's factual biography and the self-mythologizing he's done for over six decades in the public eye. This podcast walks listeners through the book, treating Dylan less like an artist and more like a thought leader.

In 2004, he starred in a Victoria's Secret ad

You read that right. By 2004, Dylan was already known as a wild card, but even his most ardent devotees were confused by the sight of their artistic hero, by then in his 60s, appearing in a lingerie commercial. Was it a cynical cash grab or just another example of Dylan’s never-ending meta-commentary on stardom?

Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman

The name change was just one facet of his self-created myth. From the moment he arrived in Greenwich Village’s folk scene, he was crafting tall tales about his life, including a claim that he'd spent the previous six years working for a carnival.

Funk musician William Onyeabor left music for Christianity

The Nigerian artist released eight albums between 1977 and 1985, often producing, recording, and releasing the records himself. After that brief career, he became a born-again Christian and left music behind. The records eventually reached collectors in the United States and England, including Talking Heads' David Byrne and Blur/Gorillaz's Damon Albarn, who praised the music's forward-thinking sounds.

'Rock 'n' roll' eventually became 'classic rock'

As the 1980s arrived, rock radio began pivoting to the term “classic rock,” allowing them to focus on the Baby Boomer demographic and ignore the still-evolving genre. Since then, “classic rock” remains, though it’s constantly being redefined, due in no small part to its slippery name.

Ironically, Prince's infamous 'Darling Nikki' ends with a Christian message

The Parents Music Resource Center targeted the "Purple Rain" cut as being a particularly dangerous example of sexually explicit music. The song ends with nearly 30 seconds of indecipherable backwards vocals. When they're reversed, however, you can hear a Christian message: "Hello, how are you? / Fine, fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon / Coming, coming soon." That might've surprised the members of the PMRC, but it wouldn't have surprised fans of Prince, who spoke often about being a Christian.

Ray Charles' 'Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music' albums blurred genre lines

Released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Charles’ records showed that country music, by then largely segregated, was an American music, no matter one’s background.

Taylor Swift's life took a turn after controversies with Kanye West

In this Rolling Stone magazine interview, the singer opens up about everything from her creative process and the personal nature of her songwriting to the challenges of fame—and the decision to re-record her earlier albums to regain control of her work.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

A teenage Springsteen struggled with his father

Springsteen’s father didn’t understand why his son was interested in pursuing a music career, leading to a tense relationship that was often exacerbated by his father’s struggles with mental illness.

'Jesus Christ Superstar' was an album before it was a musical

Written in the late '60s by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, who were hot on the heels of the successful "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," "Jesus Christ Superstar" was first recorded as an album in the style of other popular rock operas of the time, like The Who's "Tommy."

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Rockwell worked with psychoanalyst Erik Erikson

In 1953, the painter and his family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to be closer to the Austen Riggs Center, where his wife was undergoing treatment for alcoholism and depression. Rockwell began treatment, too, working with Erikson—famous for coining the term “identity crisis”—on his anxieties about his art.

Widespread use of LSD sparked a counter-cultural artistic movement in the 1960s

The trippy visuals often associated with LSD flourished in the 1960s as the drug became more widespread. Psychedelic design, defined by its undulating text and graphics, ultimately grew beyond just visuals, spawning psychedelia, a term that includes art, music, and cultural experiences based on psychedelic experiences.

Many Christians observe a different theme for each week of Advent

Many churches structure Advent around weekly themes—often hope, peace, joy, and love—which shape sermons, prayers, Scripture readings, and the lighting of candles on the Advent wreath. The specific themes vary widely across denominations and communities.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak in the DRC is spurring new Ebola vaccine development for the Bundibugyo species.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.