The Best Folk Music Singer-Songwriters You Need to Know
Folk music is having a moment. Here are the best singer-songwriters you need to know, from established legends to up-and-coming talents.
Joan Baez
Early life and influences
Joan Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Her father, Albert Baez, was a Mexican-American physicist and mathematician. Her mother, Joan Baez née Bridge, was an English-born Scottish singer. The family moved to Massachusetts when Joan was two years old. She has an older sister Pauline (known as Mimi) and a younger sister Mary Mary (known as Mimi).
Baez’s father took a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts when she was seven. The Baez family home was often a stop for young people who were interested in music and politics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She became friends with many of them, including Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk.
In 1958, Baez graduated from high school and subsequently enrolled at Boston University’s School of Theatre Arts. However, she withdrew from university after just one semester and decided to pursue a career in music instead.
Musical style and themes
Baez’s musical style encompasses folk, country, blues, and pop. Her recordings have been highly influential both musically and socially. She is known for her distinctive vocal style, as well as for selections of songs written by a variety of songwriters. On her earliest albums Baez primarily covered folk songs written by other artists, but later she began writing her own material.
Baez’s lyrics often reflect social and political issues of the 1960s and 1970s, including civil rights, the anti-war movement, and feminism. Her renditions of traditional folk songs provided inspiration to the politically active young people who listened to Joan Baez records during the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. In later years, she has also been an outspoken advocate for human rights and nonviolent activism.
Legacy
Joan Baez has been a fixture in the folk music scene for over five decades. A singer-songwriter and self-proclaimed “troubadour,” she has (through her music and activism) become an icon of the anti-war and civil rights movements.
Baez’s musical career began in the late 1950s, when she released her eponymous debut album. Since then, she has released over 30 studio albums and scored several hits, including “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Diamonds & Rust.” She has also collaborated with some of the biggest names in music, including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Jackson Browne.
In addition to her musical accomplishments, Baez is also a dedicated activist. She has been involved in various causes throughout her career, including the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement. She was also one of the original co-founders of Amnesty International.
Baez’s legacy continues to this day. In 2019, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. She is also widely regarded as one of the greatest folk music singers of all time.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is one of the most influential and important singer-songwriters of all time. Dylan’s songs have been covered by everyone from The Beatles to Nirvana, and his lyrics have been quoted by everyone from politicians to poets. Dylan’s impact on music and culture is impossible to overstate, and his influence can still be felt today.
Early life and influences
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Hibbing, a small town in the iron-mining region of northern Minnesota, where he was exposed to a wide range of musical styles, including country music, Jewish folk music, and the blues. Dylan began playing guitar and writing songs in high school. In 1959, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota, but he left college after a few months to pursue a career in music.
Dylan’s early influences included the folk singer Woody Guthrie and the rock ‘n’ roll star Elvis Presley. He began performing his own songs in coffeehouses and clubs in Minneapolis and then Greenwich Village in New York City. In 1962, he released his first album, Bob Dylan, which featured two of his most famous songs, “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” The album made Dylan an overnight sensation in the folk music scene.
Musical style and themes
Dylan’s lyrics incorporate a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres.
Legacy
Bob Dylan is one of the most influential singer-songwriters of all time. His songs have been covered by hundreds of artists and his lyrics have been analyzed and interpreted by scholars. He has won Grammys, Golden Globes, and an Oscar, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. Dylan’s impact on music and culture is undeniable.
Leonard Cohen
Though his career spans nearly 50 years, Leonard Cohen has continued to produce music that is both relevant and timeless. A singer-songwriter and poet, Cohen is best known for his introspective lyrics and haunting voice. His songs often deal with love, loss, and death, and his work has been tremendously influential to other artists.
Early life and influences
Leonard Cohen was born on September 21, 1934, in Montreal, Quebec. His father, Nathan Cohen, owned a clothing store and his mother, Masha Cohen, was a homemaker. Cohen’s grandfather, Rabbi Solomon Klinitsky-Klein, immigrated to Canada from Lithuania in 1887. Cohen’s paternal uncles later settled in Montreal and became prominent members of the city’s Jewish community. Cohen attended Roslyn Elementary School and Westmount High School. He Auditorium to hear folk artists such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. When he was sixteen years old, he started working as a contributing editor for the Canadian Jewish News.
In 1951, Cohen enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, where he studied English literature and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1955. He is also a member of the university’s CISK Librarians Folklore Society. While attending McGill, Cohen began performing as a folk singer in various clubs and coffeehouses around Montreal. One of his most frequent venues was the club La Lune Rouge (The Red Moon), where he began to develop his unique style of singing and songwriting.
After graduating from McGill, Cohen moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village folk music scene in 1956. He quickly became friends with fellow folk singers like Judy Collins and Bob Dylan. Dylan is reported to have influenced Cohen’s songwriting; Dylan once said that Cohen was “the only true modernist” in folk music. In addition to Collins and Dylan, other artists who influenced Cohen’s early career include Odetta Holmes, Irving Layton, Hutch Parker Jr., and Leonard Nimoy (who recited one of Cohen’s poems on an early album).
Musical style and themes
Cohen’s lyrics often dealt with the themes of love, sex, death, religion and politics. His work explored religion, loneliness, sexuality and personal relationships.[1] Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honor.[2][3] In 2011, Cohen received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize.[4][5]
Legacy
As a singer, songwriter and musician, Leonard Cohen was one of the most influential and prolific artists of his generation. A self-described “man of leisure,” Cohen achieved widespread success with his unique blend of folk music and poetry, paving the way for many subsequent singer-songwriters. His songs, which often explored themes of love, loss and betrayal, were both deeply personal and broadly universal, resonating with listeners around the world.
Cohen began his career in the early 1960s as a folk singer in Montreal’s bohemian Coffee House scene. He released his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 1967 to critical acclaim, but it was with his second album, 1969’s Songs From a Room, that he truly broke through to a wider audience. Featuring the now-classic tracks “Bird on the Wire” and “So Long, Marianne,” the album solidified Cohen’s reputation as one of the most talented and original songwriters of his generation.
Over the course of his long career, Cohen released 14 studio albums, including such classics as 1974’s New Skin for the Old Ceremony, 1977’s Death of a Ladies’ Man (produced by famed musician Phil Spector) and 1984’s Various Positions. He also published several books of poetry and prose, including 1968’s Selected Poems: 1956-1968 and 1976’s Death Kit. In 1988, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame; in 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and in 2008, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Cohen continued to release new albums well into his later years; his final album, You Want It Darker, was released just three weeks before his death at the age of 82. At the time of his passing, Cohen was widely revered as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time; as Rolling Stone magazine put it, he was “forever young.”
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell is one of the most successful and influential singer-songwriters of her generation. She has been praised for her poetic lyrics and intimate vocal style. Mitchell’s music encompasses a wide range of genres, including folk, jazz, and pop. She is also known for her paintings and photography.
Early life and influences
Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada. Her mother, rancher Winnifred Mitchell, hadjonimitchellmusic.jpg
Joni Mitchell at the concert celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1994
begun an affair with a married gynecologist who had delivered Joni. Shortly thereafter, her parents divorced, and her mother moved with Joni to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In Saskatoon, Joni’s musical inclinations began to take shape—she learned to play ukulele and guitar and started writing songs at age 11. By her early teens she was performing regularly on live radio programs.
During this time Mitchell also became interested in painting; she later recalled: “I’d go off into the bush with my dog Paleface and my sketch pad and be totally absorbed for days.” At age 16 she dropped out of high school and headed to Calgary with a boyfriend. While there she worked various odd jobs to support herself before eventually returning home to Saskatoon. She then spent several months hitchhiking across North America by herself—”a scary experience for a 16-year-old girl,” as she later remarked—before eventually making her way to Detroit, where she met other musicians who would help shape her career.
Musical style and themes
Joni Mitchell’s songwriting style often features densely packed lyrics with many syllables. This is due in part to her early training in classical piano, which stressed proper phrasing and cadence. In an interview with the Dallas Morning News, Mitchell explained: “I was always interested in how you could make the piano sing. I thought of it sort of like singing without words – where the melodic line was everything and the chords were almost incidental”.
Her lyrics often explore love and relationships from a woman’s perspective, as well as nature, spirituality, and political and social issues. Many of Mitchell’s songs are written in alternate or complex time signatures, which she attributes to her classical piano training.
Legacy
Joni Mitchell is one of the most influential and acclaimed singer-songwriters of her generation. Her unique blend of folk, jazz, and pop has inspired musicians for decades, and her songs have been covered by everyone from James Taylor to Prince.
Born in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, in 1943, Joni Mitchell began playing music as a child. She started out on the piano but quickly took up the guitar, which would become her primary instrument. In her teens, she began performing in coffeehouses around Calgary and soon started writing her own songs.
In 1964, Mitchell moved to Toronto, where she became a regular at the city’s folk clubs. It was there that she met Chuck Mitchell (no relation), with whom she would later form a duo. The pair moved to New York City in 1967 and recorded an album together, but it was not commercially successful.
Undeterred, Joni Mitchell continued to pursue her solo career. In 1968, she released her debut album, Song to a Seagull. The album was met with critical acclaim but only modest commercial success. Undaunted, Mitchell continued to record and release groundbreaking albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s, solidifying her reputation as one of the most important singer-songwriters of her generation.
Today, Joni Mitchell is widely considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time. She has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and she has received numerous Grammy Awards for her work.
Neil Young
Neil Young is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the best folk musicians of all time. He has been active in the music industry since the 1960s and has released over 30 studio albums. Young is known for his intricate guitar work and his distinctive voice.
Early life and influences
Neil Young was born on November 12, 1945, in Toronto, Canada. He was raised in a musical family; his mother, Edna (née Blow), was a professional singer, and his father, Scott Alexander Young, was a journalist and sportswriter who also wrote fiction. Young’s grandfathers, William Blow and Alexander James Sympson, were both immigrants from England who settled in Canadian prairie homesteads during the late 19th century. Young’s maternal grandmother, Zelda Rice, was from New York and lived in Cleveland; after being widowed young and moving to Kitchener with her children in tow, she remarried there. Consequently, for much of his childhood and youth, Young split his time between his father’s rural farmhouse northeast of Toronto (near Oro-Medonte) and Uncle Al’s suburban household west of the city (near Hillcrest Avenue and Doon Village Road in Kitchener). He sang in church choirs and played organ while still a child.
Musical style and themes
Neil Young’s musical style has varied considerably over his more than 50-year career; while he began as a folk-oriented singer-songwriter in the 1960s,Young has taken on several different genres, including country rock, hard rock, and electronic music. Young often takes on themes of loss and reconciliations, as well as environmentalism and spirituality.
Legacy
Young has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, first as a solo artist in 1995, and again as a member of Buffalo Springfield in 1997. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in February 2009. In 2000, Rolling Stone named Young the 34th greatest rock ‘n’ roll artist of all time, and he continues to be ranked as one of the greatest songwriters of all time by multiple publications.
