I'm sorry, but a song is not literature - by definition, literature is written work. Songs might technically be written before they are performed, but they are executed and experienced as the performance / recording - a written draft is not the part that the audience sees or cares about. Songs are a medium in the art of music. Poetry is a medium in the art of literature. A song is not a poem, any more than a woodcut is a photograph, or an interpretive dance is a feature film.

I stress this because I believe that literature is important, and I don't think it benefits anything when we muddy definitions beyond meaning, and open the floodgates to include "anything culturally significant."

There are plenty of awards for monumental songwriters (and Dylan has all of them). This is supposed to be an award for literature, and literature is a specific and well-populated field of arts. Awarding a songwriter instead of a writer makes it seem like the committee didn't think the literary entries were up to snuff - and that I emphatically disagree with.