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It goes without saying that Bob Dylan<\/strong> is one of the most highly-respected and critically-acclaimed singer-songwriters of all time; after all, he was the first musician to ever win the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, Dylan has also been hugely successful from a commercial standpoint \u2014 and over half a century since the start of his career, he’s still racking up streams on platforms like Spotify.<\/p>\n While a large number of Dylan’s timeless classics continue to captivate listeners, his most-streamed song is a 1973 hit that was originally written for a movie soundtrack. According to the music data website Kworb.net<\/a>, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is Dylan’s top-streamed song with a total of 722,838,250 streams (and 834,638 daily). Perhaps unsurprisingly, coming in at second and third place are two more of his most well-known and beloved tunes: “Like a Rolling Stone,” with 428,949,715 streams, and “The Times They Are A-Changin'” with 265,625,329.<\/p>\n Dylan wrote “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” for the Sam Peckinpah<\/strong>-directed Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid<\/em>, in which the folk rock star also appears. He went on to nab a Grammy nomination for\u00a0the film’s score, with “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in particular becoming a worldwide hit. Critics were as blown away by the tune as fans. Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin<\/strong>, for one, called it \u201can exercise in splendid simplicity,” per American Songwriter<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Over 100 artists have covered “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in the decades since its release, including Neil Young<\/strong>, Lana Del Rey<\/strong>, Nick Cave<\/strong>, Patti Smith<\/strong>, Paul Simon<\/strong>, Bono<\/strong>, Bon Jovi, Roger Waters<\/strong> and Jerry Garcia<\/strong>, with two of the most well-known covers coming from Eric Clapton<\/strong> and Guns N’ Roses.<\/p>\n The hard-rocking band started covering “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” live sometime around 1987, going on to release a studio version in 1990 for the movie soundtrack to Days of Thunder<\/em> and yet another take for their 1991 album,\u00a0Use Your Illusion II<\/em>.<\/p>\n According to Axl Rose<\/strong>, Dylan initially approached him about recording the song.<\/p>\n \u201cBob asked me, \u2018When you gonna record \u2018Heaven\u2019s Door\u2019?\u2019 And I said, \u2018I don\u2019t know, but we really love that song,\u2019\u201d Rose said, according to\u00a0Vulture<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he said, \u2018I don\u2019t give a f\u2014k I just want the money.\u2019 True story,\u201d Rose added.<\/p>\n During a 1991 interview<\/a> with Eduardo Bueno<\/strong> (courtesy of Rock and Roll Garage<\/a><\/em>), Dylan shared his hilariously unfiltered opinion of the band’s take on his song.<\/p>\n \u201cGuns n\u2019 Roses are OK. Slash<\/strong> is OK. But there\u2019s something about their version of that song that reminds me of the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/em>. I always wonder who\u2019s been transformed into some sort of a clone, and who\u2019s stayed true to himself. And I never seem to have an answer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Related: Bob Dylan Once Called This Iconic Guitarist a ‘Boomer’ With a ‘Chip on His Shoulder’<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This story was originally reported by Parade<\/a> on Sep 20, 2025, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It goes without saying that Bob Dylan is one of the most highly-respected and critically-acclaimed singer-songwriters of all time; after all, he was the first musician to ever win the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, Dylan has also been hugely successful from a commercial standpoint \u2014 and over half a century since the start of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2037223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[373275,29332,376324,371470],"class_list":["post-2037222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-axl-rose","tag-bob-dylan","tag-knockin-on-heavens-door","tag-movie-soundtrack"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Bob-Dylans-Most-Streamed-Song-Is-an-Exercise-in-Splendid-Simplicity.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2037222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2037223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2037222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2037222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2037222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Bob Dylan said about the Guns N’ Roses cover of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’<\/h2>\n