On May 22 this year, the Ivor Novello Award for songwriter of the year – formerly known as the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors awards and named after the Welsh entertainer Ivor Novello – was awarded to 32-year-old Charli XCX (born Charlotte Emma Aitchison). Charli, while accepting the award in London, illustrated her “songwriting genius” by quoting the lyrics to her 2024 song ‘Club Classics’: “I wanna dance to me, me, me / When I go to the club, club, club.” She added, as part of her victory speech and for good measure, “I’m sure you all agree, I am hardly Bob Dylan.” In becoming the first woman of British Indian origin to be so honoured, Charli had acknowledged the musical legend who turned 84 two days later, on May 24. It went on to show that the 52-year age gap between these two singer-songwriters was indeed merely a number. Dylan – Robert Allen Zimmerman, to give his real name – still remains as relevant today as he did 63 year ago, when his eponymously titled debut album was released in 1962.For instance, on February 28 this year, India saw the release of the biopic, A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold, about Dylan. Partially based on the thoroughly researched 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, the film portrays the singer through his earliest folk music success culminating, in a manner of speaking, to that evening of July 25, 1965 when Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and rocked through a version of ‘Maggie’s Farm’. This was followed by his new single then, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, which contained the lyrics, “like a complete unknown”, from which the movie obtains its name. What occurred then, which is objectively depicted in the movie, is that the audience of committed folk purists and political activists who had hailed Dylan as their musical saviour through his acoustic instrumentation, reacted with a mixture of shock and jeering, followed by intermittent cheers. In a few minutes, Dylan had declared his musical independence from the folk revival movement and had welcomed the roll of a rock dice as the voice of the new(er) generation. In retrospect, the incident became one of the true defining musical moments of the 20th-century. Meanwhile, the richness of Dylan’s catalogue through the decades that followed stood so strong that, in 2020, the largest label in the world, Universal Music Group, through its publishing arm, bought the entire Dylan library of 600 songs for a reported $400 million. As Universal chairman Sir Lucian Grainge said in an internal email then: “In an instant, we have forever transformed the legacy of this company…”Also read: In ‘A Complete Unknown’, The Inscrutable Bob Dylan Remains As Elusive as EverJust four years prior to that, on October 13, 2016, the Swedish Academy announced Dylan’s name was the winner of the Nobel Prize on Literature. However, Dylan reacted as any follower of his creative talents would have expected, by deciding to provide the ceremony a miss, apparently due to “pre-existing commitments” although, truth be told, he was not performing anywhere on that date!With Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize no doubt dismaying traditionalists who believed that only those who practice literature in the form of books, poems, or plays should be so honoured, but for this writer, this selection merely validated what his fans and followers always knew: Bob Dylan was, and remains, undoubtedly one of the greatest poets of our generation. Then again, Dylan has always been a non-conformist and, indeed, must have surprised himself when he briefly identified himself as the Nobel Prize winner on his website but then, equally quickly, deleted all reference to it. Performing in Las Vegas on the day of the announcement, Dylan avoided mentioning the prize, leading to Per Wastberg, the then chairman of the Nobel Literature Committee, calling Dylan’s failure to acknowledge this historic moment as “impolite and arrogant”. Oh, how much that statement would have thrilled Dylan!But those who have followed Bob Dylan’s fame and fortune know that he does things on his own time and he does it his own way. This writer learnt that on April 15, 2011 when he went to Singapore to attend the ‘Timbre Rock & Roots’ festival which was being headlined by Dylan. Right at the targeted time of 9.30 pm, Dylan arrived on stage wearing an off white coloured hat, a black suit with a white strip running down on the outer side of his pants, and his otherwise nasal voice having given way to a hoarse one as he opened with the rocking ‘Gonna Change My Way of Thinking’ from his ‘Slow Train Coming’ album. Then, Dylan did the expectedly unexpected – instead of continuing to perform with the instrument on which he composed most of his greatest hits, Dylan switched from playing guitar to playing keyboards while seated on a piano bench which was, surprisingly, his staple instrument throughout most of the evening! As Dylan ran through songs like ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ and ‘Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dum’, the best moments were reserved for the classic ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ although, as is Dylan’s wont, each track was comprehensively rearranged, often beyond recognition. After an hour, 15 minutes and 12 songs later, Dylan vanished from the stage with his band, only to return for an encore five minutes later for the sing-along of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and the mid-tempo ‘Forever Young’, an apt concert ending for an artiste whose songs can be best described as such. Cut to 2025 and Dylan continues his road trip through the ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour’ (also referred in the media as the ‘Never Ending Tour’), which actually commenced in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on November 2, 2021 in support of Dylan’s 39th studio album, Rough And Rowdy Ways, which was released in 2020. The tour was originally billed to conclude in 2024 but was extended when Dylan announced fresh dates on January 21 this year, because of the large demand for tickets. According to his website, bobdylan.com, updates have been provided upto September 19, when Dylan plays at the Alpine Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin, the very same state in the US where he kickstarted the tour four years ago.Besides Dylan’s last album containing new compositions, and in keeping with Dylan’s landmarks being referenced here across the past 15 years, another album, one containing unheard gems of the past that requires special mention is a 50th anniversary collection of recordings called Bob Dylan – 1970, that was released on February 26, 2021. The compilation contains previously unreleased outtakes and alternate versions from the sessions that produced the Dylan albums, Self Portrait and New Morning, both released in 1970. Yet, arguably, the most notable material on the three-disc collection is the complete May 1, 1970 studio recordings held alongside former Beatle and subsequent Traveling Wilbury member George Harrison performing a total of nine tracks together, including Dylan originals (‘One Too Many Mornings’, ‘Gates Of Eden’, and ‘Mama, You Been On My Mind’), covers (the Everly Brothers’ ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ and Carl Perkins’ ‘Matchbox’) along with a rendition of the Beatles’ classic, ‘Yesterday’. While, like most musicians starting their respective careers, Dylan would have hoped for a long stretch in this ever changing music industry, even he – let alone critics – would have never imagined that his popularity would continue and has barely subsided for an artist who has sold well over 125 million units worldwide, as Bob Dylan finds himself walking towards…nah, make that a running towards, his 85th birthday.Parag Kamani is a rock and pop music aficionado.