3 Folk Lyrics That Completely Changed How Songwriters Wrote Music

Folk music has come and gone in various evolutions over the decades. Let’s look at a few memorable folk songs with particularly memorable lines that really changed the genre in big ways. Some of these folk lyrics will stick with you forever, if they haven’t already.

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“Little Green” by Joni Mitchell (1971)

“Child with a child pretending / Weary of lies you are sending home / So you sign all the papers in the family name / You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed / Little green, have a happy ending.”

The whole of Joni Mitchell’s Blue album is considered by many to be the album that pivoted the direction of folk songwriting in the early 1970s. It’s an agonizingly vulnerable album, and Mitchell herself said that songs like “Little Green”, which features the lyrics above, “embarrassed” some songwriters at the time, namely men who were afraid of getting more vulnerable. Specifically, Kris Kristofferson even told her to “save something” of herself. She didn’t listen, stood by her art, and changed folk music because of it.

“This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie (1945)

“This land is your land, this land is my land / From California to the New York island, / From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters / This land was made for you and me.”

Encroaching on a century old, this legendary folk song by Woody Guthrie changed the trajectory of folk music in the 1940s. “This Land Is Your Land” has come to be one of the most well-known traditional folk songs in the United States. And it was written as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”. It’s a critical song that digs into Western capitalism, property, and class while still celebrating the United States as a hub for just about everyone and American virtues. It paved the way for political-leaning folk music. And Guthrie inspired countless folk musicians during the Greenwich Village folk movement in the 1960s.

“Blowin’ In The Wind” by Bob Dylan (1962)

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? / How many seas must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?”

Well, there’s no way we’d have a list of influential folk lyrics without mentioning at least one Bob Dylan track. I went with “Blowin’ In The Wind” simply because of the time at which it was released and the enormous influence it had on American folk music at the time. It’s an anthem, one that heralded in an era of social change. It served as the soundtrack backdrop to one of the most politically charged eras in American history. The whole of this song is a beautiful reflection on social justice, dignity, and human freedom. And it remains one of Dylan’s most legendary songs.

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