Who is the most successful songwriter ever according to Rolling Stone magazine?

Bob Dylan's vision of American popular music was transformative. No one set the bar higher, or had greater impact. "You want to write songs that are bigger than life," he wrote in his memoir, Chronicles. "You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen." Dylan himself saw no difference between modern times and the storied past.

Then Dylan began to climb the charts on his own with music that turned pop into prophecy: "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Like a Rolling Stone," "Positively Fourth Street," "Rainy Day Women ". His personas shifted, but songs like "Tangled Up in Blue," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Forever Young" continued to define their eras in lasting ways. And alone among his peers Dylan's creativity was ceaseless –2000's Love and Theft returned him to a snarling sound that rivaled his electric youth, marking a renaissance that continues unabated. A song is like a dream, and you try to get generations into a song that both electrified the current moment and became lasting standards. Early songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" became hits for others –Peter, Paul & Mary who took it to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.