If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet this week, you are likely aware that, on Monday, Bob Dylan celebrated his 80th birthday.

We decided that to mark the occasion with a single day’s worth of content — a heartfelt essay, a career-spanning ranking of his albums, perhaps — would be insufficient acknowledgment of, for our money, the single greatest artist alive right now. So instead, we committed to a full week.

Turns out a week wasn’t enough either.

Dylan’s career, which itself now spans seven decades, has been so varied and influential that you could spend a lifetime studying and reflecting on it. Lots of people have, in fact, hence the never-ending stream of new books always being published about his work. For our part, we asked some of our favorite writers to explore whatever facet of his career they happen to find most interesting right now.

We covered a lot of ground, but nowhere near all of it. We’ll see you back here for his 90th?