Bob Dylan: 10 essential tracks you need in your life as singer-songwriter turns 79

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. "Song to Woody" One of two originals on Dylan's first studio album – otherwise comprised of folk classics such as "House of the Rising Sun" and "Man of Constant Sorrow" – "Song to Woody" is a touching ballad dedicated to 21-year-old Dylan's idol, folk icon Woody Guthrie. "Ballad of a Thin Man" Released just a month after Dylan's infamous electric concert at the July 1965 Newport Folk Festival – seen by many as a sign that Dylan was turning his back on the protest songs and folk répertoire that had made him famous – "Ballad of a Thin Man" is haunted by Dylan's piano motif and is dripping with contempt. "Sara" Featured at the close of the 1976 album Desire, "Sara" is a poetic, surrealist account of Dylan's love for – and crumbling 12-year marriage with – his first wife, Sara Dylan. Perhaps the song doesn't have the strong message of "Political World", or the pure simplicity of "Ring Them Bells", but it's a beautiful demonstration of Dylan's hypnotic writing, a successful iteration of his Eighties crooning style, and – thanks to interludes filled mainly with the sounds of a guitar, a base, and chirping crickets – a reminder that music exists in silence as much as it does in sound.