3 Underrated Folk Songs You’ll Like if You Love “Blowin’ In The Wind”

“Blowin’ In The Wind” is undeniably a folk classic and perhaps Bob Dylan‘s most enduring song to this day. It explores themes of peace and freedom. It asks questions that not everyone was asking at the time. There might never be another “Blowin’ In The Wind”. But some of these underrated folk tunes come close if you’re in search of something similar.

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“The Fiddle And The Drum” by Joni Mitchell

At first, when you listen to this song, it sounds like Mitchell is singing to an old friend who has gone down a troubled path. Especially when she sings, “My dear Johnny, my dear friend / And so once again you are fightin’ us all.”

Then, as she often does so well, Joni throws her audience for a loop and spins this song on its head when she sings:

And so once again
Oh, America my friend
And so once again
You are fighting us all
And when we ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry and we fall
Oh, my friend
How did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum.

“There But For Fortune” by Joan Baez

Written originally by protest singer Phil Ochs, “There But For Fortune” became a hit for Joan Baez at a time when protesting the Vietnam War wasn’t necessarily the popular thing to do. In the song, Joan sings:

Show me the country where the bombs had to fall
Show me the ruins of the buildings once so tall
And I’ll show you a young land with so many reasons why
But there but for fortune go you and I, you and I.

The phrase “there but for fortune” means that anyone else, without having better luck, could be in the same difficult position as another person. This would have been quite the powerful sentiment at the time.

“The War Drags On” by Donovan

“The War Drags On” is similar to the Baez song, and it is a powerful piece that sings about the Vietnam War.

Donovan, who grew up with a unionist father who taught himself literature, felt well prepared to write anthems of change, just as many other songwriters were doing at the time.

“So I was well-primed, when I was 16 and heard the radical songs of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and realized what was going on,” the songwriter shared with Performing Songwriter. “There was a growing voice coming out of that tradition. Did I feel threatened? No. I took on the mantle very early to be a voice for a generation who was speaking out against hypocrisy and greed.”

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