Rod Stewart has long been known for a voice that can sell just about anything, but one songwriter stood above the rest in his eyes: Bob Dylan. In a piece published on May 14, 2026, the article argues that Dylan is the lyricist Stewart held up as the “all-time great,” the writer whose songs showed how lyrics could hit with force even when they sounded loose, rough, or unfinished.
The core of Stewart’s admiration comes from a simple idea: great lyrics do not need to be overly polished to feel true. The article notes that Stewart came out of the blues tradition, where swagger and feeling often mattered more than literary neatness, and that he was drawn to Dylan because Dylan wrote in a way that sounded immediate and alive rather than carefully packaged.
Stewart’s own words make the point clearly. He said, “I love Bob Dylan. I think he is the all-time great lyricist. Not enough can be said about Bob.” That statement sits at the center of the piece and explains why Dylan mattered so much to Stewart as a singer and storyteller.
The article also connects that admiration to Stewart’s own development as an artist. It points to Every Picture Tells a Story as the point where he moved further into a singer-songwriter mindset, one shaped by the same conversational, lived-in quality that made Dylan’s writing feel so different from standard pop songwriting.
Dylan’s influence, as described in the article, was not just about clever lines or poetic imagery. It was about the feeling that the songs were speaking directly to the listener, without tidy endings or polished delivery. That looseness gave songs like “Desolation Row” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues” their edge, and it is part of why Stewart saw Dylan as revolutionary.
The piece also frames Dylan’s impact through one of his most famous songs, “Like a Rolling Stone,” describing it as a turning point that showed how a folk singer could step into rock and reshape popular music in the process. For Stewart, that kind of leap was the mark of a true original.
In the end, the article is less about ranking and more about respect. Stewart may never have written like Dylan, but he clearly recognized the force of Dylan’s words and the way they changed what rock lyrics could be. That is why the article casts Dylan as the lyricist who set the bar, and Stewart as one of the many artists who knew it when they heard it.
