Blowin' in the Wind

Bob Dylan wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" in 1962, putting it out as a single and on his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Often called a protest song, it asks a string of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. Its repeated line, "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind," has been called "impenetrably ambiguous"—either the answer is so plain it's right in front of you, or it's as hard to grasp as the wind itself.

Peter, Paul and Mary version

The song entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1994. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked it number 14 on its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time." Though it didn't chart when first released as a single, it later got heavy radio play, eventually reaching number 3 on the French airplay chart.

In June 1963, three weeks after The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out, Peter, Paul and Mary released a cover. This became the most commercially successful version, hitting number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spending five weeks at number 1 on the Middle-Road charts. At the 6th Grammy Awards, it won Best Folk Recording and Best Performance by a Vocal Group. In 2003, that cover was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Origins and initial response

Dylan first wrote and performed a two-verse version, debuting it live at Gerde's Folk City on April 16, 1962; that performance was recorded and circulated among collectors. Soon after, he added a middle verse. Some published lyrics swap the order of the second and third verses, likely because Dylan just tacked the new verse onto his original manuscript instead of rewriting it cleanly. The song first appeared in print in May 1962, in the sixth issue of Broadside, a magazine focused on topical songs founded by Agnes 'Sis' Cunningham and Gordon Friesen.

The theme may have come from a passage in Woody Guthrie's 1943 autobiography Bound for Glory, where Guthrie compared his political awareness to newspapers blowing in New York City streets. Dylan, deeply familiar with Guthrie's work, had found that reading a major turning point in his own intellectual and political growth.

In June 1962, the song was published in Sing Out! with Dylan's own comments: "There ain't too much I can say about this song except that the answer is blowing in the wind. It ain't in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group. Man, it's in the wind – and it's blowing in the wind.