| "The Times They Are a-Changin'" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Swedish picture sleeve | ||||
| Single byBob Dylan | ||||
| from the albumThe Times They Are a-Changin' | ||||
| B-side | "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" | |||
| Released | March 8, 1965 | |||
| Recorded | October 24, 1963 | |||
| Studio | Columbia Recording, New York City | |||
| Genre | Folk | |||
| Length | 3:15 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Songwriter | Bob Dylan | |||
| Producer | Tom Wilson | |||
| Bob Dylan singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"The Times They Are a-Changin'" is a song written byBob Dylan and released as the title track of his1964 album of the same name. Dylan wrote it as ananthem of change for the time, influenced by Irish and Scottish ballads. Released as a45-rpm single in Britain in 1965, it reached number 9 on theUK Singles Chart.[1] The song was not released as a single in the US.[2] In 2025, it was certified Gold byBPI.[3]
The song has influenced people's views about society. Critics have said the lyrics' universality give the song a lasting message of change. According to Dylan's official website, he performed the song 633 times between 1963 and 2009, making it his 23rd most-performed song as of June 2023.[4] The song has been covered by many artists, includingNina Simone;Josephine Baker;the Byrds;the Seekers;Peter, Paul and Mary;Tracy Chapman;Simon & Garfunkel;Blackmore's Night;Runrig;the Beach Boys;Joan Baez;Phil Collins;Billy Joel;Bruce Springsteen;Me First and the Gimme Gimmes;Brandi Carlile; andBurl Ives. The song was ranked number 59 onRolling Stone's 2004 list of the"500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[5]
Dylan appears to have written the song in September and October 1963. He recorded it as aWitmark publishing demo at that time, a version that was later released onThe Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. The song was then recorded atColumbia Studios in New York on October 23 and 24;[6] the latter session yielding the version that became the title song of Dylan's third album.[7] Thea- in the song title is an archaic intensifying prefix, as in the British songs "A-Hunting We Will Go" and "Here We Come a-Wassailing", from the 18th and 19th century.
Dylan recalled writing the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the moment. In 1985, he toldCameron Crowe, "This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by theIrish and Scottish ballads ...'Come All Ye Bold Highway Men', 'Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens'. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. Thecivil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time."[8]
Dylan biographerClinton Heylin wrote that musicianTony Glover stopped by Dylan's apartment in September 1963, picked up a page of the song Dylan was working on, and read a line from it: "Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call." Glover asked, "What is this shit, man?" Dylan shrugged and replied, "Well, you know, it seems to be what the people want to hear."[9]
CriticMichael Gray called it "the archetypalprotest song." Gray commented, "Dylan's aim was to ride upon the unvoiced sentiment of a mass public—to give that inchoate sentiment an anthem and give its clamour an outlet. He succeeded, but the language of the song is nevertheless imprecisely and very generally directed."[7] Gray suggested that the song has been made obsolete by the very changes that it predicted and hence was politically out of date almost as soon as it was written.
Literary criticChristopher Ricks suggested that "the song transcends the political preoccupations of the time in which it was written". Ricks argued in 2003 that Dylan was still performing the song, and when he sang "Your sons and your daughters / Are beyond your command", he "sang inescapably with the accents not of a son, no longer perhaps primarily a parent, but with the attitude of a grandfather." Ricks concluded, "Once upon a time it may have been a matter of urging square people to accept the fact that their children were, you know, hippies. But the capacious urging could then come to mean that ex-hippie parents had better accept that their children look like becoming yuppies. And thenRepublicans..."[10]
Critic Andy Gill points out that the song's lyrics echo lines from theBook of Ecclesiastes, whichPete Seeger adapted to create his anthem "Turn, Turn, Turn!". The climactic line about the first later being last, likewise, is a direct scriptural reference toMark 10:31: "But many that are first shall be last, and the last first."[11]
Less than a month after Dylan recorded the song,President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The next night, Dylan opened a concert with "The Times They Are a-Changin'"; he told biographerAnthony Scaduto, "I thought, 'Wow, how can I open with that song? I'll get rocks thrown at me.' But I had to sing it, my whole concert takes off from there. I know I had no understanding of anything. Something had just gone haywire in the country and they were applauding the song. And I couldn't understand why they were clapping, or why I wrote the song. I couldn't understand anything. For me, it was just insane."[12]
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| New Zealand (RMNZ)[13] | Gold | 15,000‡ |
| United Kingdom (BPI)[3] | Gold | 400,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. | ||
| "The Times They Are a-Changin'" | |
|---|---|
 2011 re-release picture sleeve 45-rpm vinyl | |
| Song bythe Byrds | |
| from the albumTurn! Turn! Turn! | |
| Released | December 6, 1965 |
| Recorded | September 1, 1965 |
| Studio | Columbia,Hollywood, California |
| Genre | Folk rock |
| Length |
|
| Label | Columbia |
| Songwriter | Bob Dylan |
| Producer | Terry Melcher |
"The Times They Are a-Changin'" was one of two Dylan covers thatthe Byrds included on their second album,Turn! Turn! Turn!, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" being the other.[14] Like other Dylan compositions that the band had covered, such as "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "All I Really Want to Do", the song was intended to be theA-side of a single. It was sung by bandleaderJim McGuinn and prominently features his signaturetwelve-stringRickenbacker guitar. The song was often played at concerts surrounding its release.[15]
I remember the Beatles were in the studio for one of them (version of 'The Times They Are a-Changin'). That kinda put a lot of pressure on us.
George Harrison andPaul McCartney ofthe Beatles attended the Byrds' recording of the song on September 1, 1965, atColumbia's studios onSunset Boulevard.[17] Members of the Byrds later reflected that the presence of the two Beatles prevented them from completing the track effectively.[16][18]Columbia Records originally pressed thousands of cover sleeves for the intended single, but the Byrds' manager,Jim Dickson, asked for the release to be dropped because of the group's dissatisfaction, most vocally expressed byDavid Crosby; Dickson originally thought the song would have made a strong single. In a 2004 interview,Chris Hillman stated his dislike for the song, suggesting that "we shouldn't have bothered with that song".[16][19] Another version of the song, recorded in June, is a bonus track on the 1996 reissue. "Turn! Turn! Turn!" ended up becoming the band's third single, reaching number 1 on the U.S.Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 26 on theUK Singles Chart.[20][21]
The Byrds performed the song on the U.S.television programHullabaloo, but it failed to make a long-term impact.[22] CBS England issued "The Times They Are a-Changin'" as the lead track of anEP, along with "Set You Free This Time", written byGene Clark, which was moderately successful.[23] In addition to its appearance on the Byrds' second album, "The Times They Are a-Changin'" is included on several Byrdscompilations, includingThe Byrds' Greatest Hits Volume II,The Very Best of The Byrds,The Byrds,The Essential Byrds,There Is a Season, andThe Byrds Play Dylan.[24]
In January 1984, a youngSteve Jobs recited the second verse of "The Times They Are a-Changin'" in his opening of the 1984 Apple shareholders meeting, where he famously unveiled theMacintosh computer for the first time.[25]
The "Dylan Covers Database"[26] listed 436 recordings, including bootlegs, of this song as of October 19, 2009. According to the same database, the song has been recorded in at least 14 other languages, such as Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Hip hop groupPublic Enemy allude to it in their 2007 Dylan tribute song "Long and Whining Road": "It's been a long and whining road, even though time keeps a-changin' / I'm a bring it all back home".[27]
In 2009, the filmmakerMichael Moore sang the third verse of the song live onThe Jay Leno Show after being told that he had to "earn" a clip from his filmCapitalism: A Love Story to be shown.[28]
On December 10, 2010, Dylan's hand-written lyrics of the song were sold at auction atSotheby's, in New York, for $422,500. They were purchased by ahedge fund manager.[29]
The song is included in "The 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll", a permanent exhibit at theRock and Roll Hall of Fame.[30][31]
Billy Bragg covered the song but updated the lyrics, singing "Accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone/For the climate is obviously changing," and "But the man in the White House says no one's to blame/For the times, they are a-changing back."[32]
A cover of the song by singer Susan Calloway was used in a commercial for the2022 Stanley Cup Finals. The commercial featured an edited sequence of handoffs of theStanley Cup between notable former Cup winning players with Calloway's version accompanying.[33]
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band covered the song in 2021 with guest vocals fromJason Isbell,Steve Earle,Rosanne Cash, andthe War and Treaty, for their albumDirt Does Dylan. Proceeds from sales of their version were donated toFeeding America.[34]
