“Blowin' in The Wind” by Bob Dylan

"Blowin' in the Wind" was written by Bob Dylan in 1962 and put out in 1963, both as a single and on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and it's about as bare as a record can be: one young man, his acoustic guitar and his harmonica, with John Hammond producing. Dylan doesn't preach; he asks. The whole song is a string of questions about peace, war and freedom, and the refrain hangs the answer out of reach, either too obvious to miss or too elusive to hold.

That ambiguity is what made it a protest song for everybody. Dylan's single didn't chart at first, but it kept finding its way onto the radio, the Grammy Hall of Fame inducted it in 1994, and Rolling Stone put it at 14 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.