US singer Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first songwriter to win the prestigious award.
The balladeer, artist and actor is the first American to win since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993.
His songs include Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They are A-Changin'.
Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Dylan had been chosen because he was "a great poet in the English speaking tradition".
"For 54 years now he's been at it reinventing himself, constantly creating a new identity," she told reporters in Stockholm.
The singer is due to perform later this week at the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas.
Now you have to remember that Dylan didn't get the prize for his music folks, it was for the words to his songs!
The closest comparison we have to Dylan up here in Canada would be Leonard Cohen with perhaps the most perfect, and poetic summary of his whole life and career:
“I did my best, it wasn’t much. I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch. I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah…”
~ lyrics from his 1984 masterpiece, Hallelujah
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