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I loathed Bob Dylan until I studied his work for a portion of a third year English Lit course (the same course introduced me to Italo Calvino and Gertrude Stein; hands down the best English class I ever took). Through that study, I started to really look at Dylan's lyrics which are, especially in his early works, magical and poetic. One of my favourite in-transit songs is Tangled Up In Blue (we spent an entire hour debating which poet Dylan meant in the lines, "Then she opened up a book of poems/And handed it to me/Written by an Italian poet/From the thirteenth century.") Yeah, I could do an entire podcast about Dylan but I'm sure someone out there already is...
I can't say I ever loathed him, though I never really had the time of day for him and was only accustomed to his "greatest hits" packages and the like. One of my measures of respect for a songwriter is when I forsake cover artists to want to listen to the originals. In the case of Dylan, that is hundreds of songs, and with all the great covers out there, more often than not I'd still rather hear his nasally warble.
That's a good point, too. There are a few exceptions (Edie Brickell's cover of Hard Rain from the Born on the Fourth of July soundtrack is one example) but generally, Dylan's own voice is the preference, just as listening to a poet recite their own work.

My loathing grew from having to listen to Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 over and over and over because it was on the one mix-tape in a friend's car (I think the tape got jammed in the deck of that poor little Celica...). I still cannot listen to that particular song.