The 10 Best Bob Dylan Songs

Many could feel a major shift in the American cultural and political landscape in the early 1960s. But Bob Dylan was able to speak it, feel it, frame it in a way nobody else could. Dylan even described “The Times They Are A-Changin'” as a “song with a purpose.” But what’s beautiful about it is that it’s political without being political. It doesn’t address specific issues. No, what the song does is portray a slowly crumbling social order being discarded by a new generation coming to grips with the world’s chaos and inequality. Written in 1963, it was released a couple of months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, giving it an added layer of gravitas. “The Times They Are A-Changin'” is Dylan at his most anthemic, his most prophetic. But Dylan wouldn’t agree. “I didn’t mean it as a statement,” he would later say. “It’s a feeling.”