The Times They Are A-Changin' ... Again

How Bob Dylan's generational anthem sounds at the outset of 2025

At the 1963 March on Washington, the 22-year-old Bob Dylan sang before the largest crowd he had ever seen.

A quarter of a million civil rights protesters gathered on the Washington Mall, where they would hear Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech.

Dylan’s songs that day in August included A Pawn in Their Game, about the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and, with Joan Baez, When the Ship Comes In, a ballad that prophesies a day when the chains of bondage will be broken.

Civil rights marches and anti-war protests were the backdrop for one of Dylan’s most famous early songs, written a few months after the Washington march. It became a generational anthem and the title of his third album: The Times They Are A-Changin’.

Its lyrics about the rise of a new order and the coming extinction of old ways make it seem endlessly relevant to each generation that finds its voice and makes its impact: Gen Z could adopt it, just as the Boomers did. But ultimately it is a song t…