In honor of Bob Dylan's 79th birthday I'll count down my favorite 79 of his songs throughout the day.

79. Foot Of Pride
78. Man Of Constant Sorrow
77. Pledging My Time
76. Romance In Durango
75. Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues
74. From A Buick 6
73. Tweeter & The Monkey Man

72. Silvio
71. Brownsville Girl
70. Dignity
69. If You Ever Go To Houston
68. All The Tired Horses
67. Wigwam
66. Murder Most Foul
65. When I Paint My Masterpiece
64. If Dogs Run Free
63. Queen Jane Approximately
62. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome
61. One More Cup Of Coffee

60. Black Diamond Bay
59. Hurricane
58. Meet Me In The Morning
57. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
56. Clothes Line Saga
55. Temporary Like Achilles
54. A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
53. Song To Woody
52. Love Sick
51. Wanted Man

50. Girl From The North Country
49. Love Minus Zero/No Limit
48. The Times They Are A-Changin'
47. Knockin' On Heaven's Door
46. Rollin' And Tumblin'
45. Leopard Skin-Pillbox Hat
44. Trying To Get To Heaven
43. Mozambique
42. I'm Not There
41. Visions Of Johanna

40. "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)" And we'll say a few words about the top 40. There will be a lot of "Blonde on Blonde" representation going forward, which is a nearly perfect collection of garage rock poetry.

39. "Buckets Of Rain" And also a lot of "Blood on the Tracks," which exists in almost the exact opposite emotional space as "Blonde on Blonde."

38. "Lay Lady Lay." Dylan the crooner of country-tinged love songs doesn't get quite the critical love of Dylan the Voice of His Generation, Heartbroken Dylan, Dylan the drug-fueled trickster or Dylan the Bard of Mortality, but he should.

37. "I Want You." It attempts to be a straightforward love song and then just sorta... spirals into hallucinagenic-inspired whimsey. Syd Barrett may have taken notes.

36. "Positively 4th Street." And a reminder never to romanticize Bob Dylan too much: so many of his early songs are pure Fuck Off songs, none more nakedly mean-spirited than this as Dylan spits pure acid at his (still uncertain) target.

35. "Maggie's Farm." An all-purpose, hard rocking protest song. The ultimate take-this-job-and-shove-it anthem (uh, besides well "Take This Job And Shove It"). It was especially great during the Thatcher years.

34. "Gotta Serve Somebody." The Born Again period actually resulted in some fantastic records, none better than this track which puts the righteous back in self-righteous.

33. "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight." Dylan in Absolute Charmer Mode.

32. "Mixed Up Confusion." Dylan actually went electric before he officially "Went Electric," on this raucous number that dates back from 1962.

31. "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" Bob Dylan thought, somehow, that this would be a hit. This is what acid will do to your judgment. THAT BEING SAID. In my ideal world this would have shot to number one.

30. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues." The Dylan original is fantastic, an epic poem on alcoholism and addiction, but it's moved up a few spots because of the fact that it inspired the greatest Dylan cover of all time, courtesy of Miss Nina Simone.

29. "Desolation Row." You could build an entire literature course out of this song. Of course I love it.

28. "Just LIke A Woman." A great song if not exactly Dylan at his most woke.

27. "Fourth Time Around." If it weren't for "Sweet Home Alabama," this would be the best answer record of the classic rock era. The Beatles successfully went Dylan for "Norwegian Wood" so Dylan did his version of the Beatles going Dylan on this track.

26. "Mr. Tambourine Man." He never seemed to get this right in the studio, I don't think (although the Byrds certainly did) it's a song that always seemed to breathe better live.

25. "My Back Pages." I think I will cheat once again and include a cover here. The Byrds came up with the definitive version of this song, I think we can all agree.

24. "Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)." There's no good version of Dylan singing this track on YouTube, which is a shame since his raw demo version just hits harder than the (obviously delightful) popular cover.

23. "Tombstone Blues." "The sun's not yellow/ It's chicken."

22. "Simple Twist Of Fate." I have spent a lot of time in the last two decades thinking about the line about walking around with "a parrot that talks" and I still have nothing.

21. "If Not For You." Here's a ramshackle version with Dylan singing with George Harrison. I dedicate this one to @ashobenos

20. "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." Whenever I hear people attacking pop singers as just writing break-up songs to exes, I go back to Dylan and I'm like "What did you think Bob was singing about?"

19. "It Ain't Me Babe." ...Like, seriously. What do you think these songs are about? Does that make them any less brilliant?

18. Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) The first girl that I knew that ever liked me was from Boston, I took that as a sign, this was the song about a hook up that somehow never happened. She went her way, I went mine.

17. Things Have Changed. I'll be honest, when I was starting college I was expecting Bob Dylan to be a Set Thing. A Catalog To Go Over and then that bastard started releasing songs that were just as good as his old stuff.

16. All Along The Watchtower. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm all alone in my belief that Dylan's haunting, acoustic original version of this song is the definitive take. Even Dylan plays it like Jimi these days. Oh well.

15. "Highway 61 Revisited." Has anyone seen America as clearly as this?

14. "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream." Well, maybe Melville caught a glimpse of what Bob's looking for.

13. "Shelter From The Storm." This one goes out to @WhyTravisFelt

12. "Blind Willie McTell." A sequel song of sorts to the St James Infirmary Blues.

11. "Not Dark Yet." But it's getting there.

10. "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding." This is less of a song and more of Dylan's Greatest Hits all thrown into one blistering tirade.

9. "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." When we are going over Dylan's lines, "forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you" probably can't be topped as far as wisdom.

8. "Most Of The Time." Has there ever been a better song written about a lingering memory that just always pops back up?

7. "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With Those Memphis Blues Again". What... what is exactly going on... in this song again? Hold up... no, is that... Harpo (crashing noises)?

6. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" It's like somebody's singing the Wikipedia entry of your own life at you

5. "Absolutely Sweet Marie." I once posted a piece of paper that said "Where Are You Tonight, Sweet Marie?" on my dorm room wall.

4. "Jokerman." "You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowin'" Possibly a song that means more to me than anybody else

3. "Lily, Rosemary & The Jack Of Hearts" Just a perfect story, perfectly told.

2. And we get "Tangled Up In Blue."

And then