STOCKHOLM (AP) — Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature last Thursday, a stunning announcement that for the first time bestowed the prestigious award on a musician for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

Reporters and others who gathered at the Swedish Academy’s headquarters in Stockholm’s Old Town reacted with a loud cheer as his name was read out.

Dylan, 75, is the most iconic poet-musician of his generation. Songs such as

Blowin’ in the Wind andThe Times They Are A-Changin’ became anthems for the US anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the first American winner of the Nobel literature prize since Toni Morrison in 1993.

Dylan’s impact on popular culture was immense and his influence as a lyricist extends to every major music figure and songwriter of the last 50 years, from the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Ed Sheeran and beyond.

Generally described as a rock musician, Dylan has been influenced by numerous musical styles, including country, gospel, blues, folk, pop, and rhythm and blues. He pursued them all, sometimes separately and other times simultaneously, establishing a towering influence.

But although he had been mentioned in Nobel speculation for years, many experts had ruled him out, thinking the academy wouldn’t extend its more than a century-old award to the world of music.

They were wrong. The academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius, said while Dylan performs his poetry in the form of songs, that’s no different from the ancient Greeks, whose works were often performed to music.

“Bob Dylan writes poetry for the ear,” she said. “But it’s perfectly fine to read his works as poetry.”

Danius told

The Associated Press that a “great majority” on the 18-member Nobel panel voted for Dylan. She said her personal favorites among Dylan’s songs include Chimes of Freedom and Visions of Johanna, and suggested that people unfamiliar with Dylan’s music start by listening to his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.

Writers, musicians and even heads of state commented on the Nobel academy’s choice on

Twitter. British author Salman Rushdie, whose name is often mentioned in the Nobel Literature Prize speculation, called Dylan “the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition. Great choice”.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet congratulated Dylan, saying “many fond memories from my adolescence are associated with his music”.

Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh was less impressed, however.

“I’m a Dylan fan, but this is an ill conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies,” he tweeted.

Lyrics from scores of Dylan songs, such as

Blowin’ in the Wind, Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,My Back Pages and It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), have worked their way into the public lexicon over the years, becoming repeated over and over, much in the manner of lines from Shakespearean plays.

The literary value of Dylan’s texts are also supported by

The Norton Introduction to Literature, a textbook used in American high schools and universities, which includes the lyrics to Dylan’sMr Tambourine Man.

Born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan grew up in a Jewish middle-class family.

By his early 20s, he had taken the folk music world by storm. From that time on, he would constantly reinvent himself — often enraging followers in the process — but then later winning them back and adding new admirers. His career was such a complicated pastiche of elusive, ever-changing styles that it took six actors to portray him in the 2007 movie based on his life,

I’m Not There.

He won an Academy Award in 2001 for the song

Things Have Changed and received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1991. In 2008, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to music and American culture.

Dylan is the most unorthodox Nobel literature prize winner since 1997, when the award went to Italian playwright Dario Fo, whose works some say also need to be performed to be fully appreciated. By a sad coincidence, Fo died Thursday at age 90.

Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich won last year’s Nobel literature award.

The literature prize completed this year’s Nobel Prize announcements. The six awards, each worth 8 million kronor (about US$930,000), will be handed out on Dec 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.