Photo credit: Val Wilmer/Redferns via Biography.com.A wise man once said: "All I can ever be is me, whoever that is." And, aftereight decades of being "whoever" he is, Bob Dylan has quite a lot to show forhimself. The singer, songwriter and author turned 80 this week, ringing in notjust birthday celebrations but a reminder of what it means to channel rawhonesty into a story that speaks to millions. The waves of Dylan's "voice of ageneration" continue to push, concede, and keep our 2021 consciousness just theslightest bit humbled. In honor of his eightieth, let's revisit some of Dylan'sgreatest hits.From his protest anthems of the 60s, to his more innovative and transcendentexplorations of the 90s, few artists have created such a vast and engaging bodyof work as Bob Dylan. From the beginning of his career, Dylan defied definition.Instead of adhering to a "purist" genre or style, Dylan explored his love ofmusic in all its forms: he played what he wanted to play. The artist found hisstrength in fusing the folk of Woody Guthrie with the blues of Robert Johnsonand adding the excitement of Little Richard to create something brand new.Another of Dylan's immortalizing strengths is his lyrical prose. The artistreceived the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for his unique ability to provethat lyrics can go deeper than simple rhymes: they can become works ofliterature. His 1963 hit "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5al0HmR4to] from his album The Freewheelin'Bob Dylan uses such lyricality to imbue a reckoning into the tune. In this song,Dylan doesn't shy away from the abysmal threat of the future, instead, he usesthe seven minutes to tap into the American consciousness which fears the threatof nuclear war. Indeed, Dylan wrote the song amidst the turbulent instability ofthe early 60s, where chaos loomed and social unrest spilled into the streets. Atthe time, Dylan reported:> “Every line in it is actually the start of a whole song, but when I wrote it, Ithought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs, so I put allI could into this one.”Photo credit: fair use.In other Dylan songs, the artist turns the harsh eye ofreality to not just a looming future but the individuals around him. Widelyconsidered his greatest song, "Like a Rolling Stone" from his 1965 album Highway61 Revisited, exposes not just the elites, the snobbish, or the misguided. Itinvestigates the listener, the neighbor, turning an unblinking eye to all ofthose by which he is surrounded. As this[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/10-greatest-bob-dylan-songs-152077/a-hard-rains-a-gonna-fall-159663/] 2016 Rolling Stone magazine article puts it, "The world was changed by a crankyvoice, a romantic spirit, somebody who cared enough about an unrequited love towrite such a devastatingly caustic put-down." That is to say, a hit whichreckons with the futility of everyday life became an anthem for a generation.There's got to be some kind of magic in that.At 80, Dylan has set behind him a body of work that has forever impactedAmerican cultural consciousness, and the practice of telling a story to whichpeople will listen. And, for years to come, listen they will. Watch Dylan in a1965 performance of "Like A Rolling Stone" below.