15 Must-Hear Folk Songs [1970s Edition]
The 1970s proved to be a golden era for folk music, with the genre’s most celebrated songwriters producing some of their finest, most enduring work during that decade.
While folk had been a major cultural force throughout the 1960s thanks to pivotal artists like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Joan Baez, the 70s represented an artistic high point.
Fueled by the confessional singer-songwriter movement, a renaissance in roots/Americana music, and a lingering activist spirit from the 60s, folk flourished anew with a new crop of poetic, emotionally rich songs for the ages.
Here is a deeper look at 20 quintessential folk tracks from that legendary 10-year period:
1. ‘Heart of Gold’ by Neil Young (1972)
Neil Young’s signature song ‘Heart of Gold‘ was a standout moment from his intimate classics period in the early 1970s. Having risen to fame with Crazy Horse on distortion-drenched rock opuses, Young shifted gears toward a mellower acoustic sound anchored by his plaintive vocals and deftly interwoven figurative storytelling.
The understated folk-rock shuffle of ‘Heart of Gold’ provided the perfect setting for artists James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt’s gorgeous backing vocalizations and harmonies to elevate the wistful melody.
Young’s lyrics moved fluidly between metaphysical musings on the fragility of aging and romantic longing, with an intellectual curiosity belying the song’s gentle exterior.
While a major pop crossover hit, ‘Heart of Gold’ crucially retained Young’s idiosyncratic introspective spirit, making it a rich artistic statement and an indelible fan favorite from his legendary catalog.
2. ‘Pancho and Lefty’ by Townes Van Zandt (1972)
The brilliance of Townes Van Zandt‘s bittersweet folk narrative ‘Pancho and Lefty’ lies in its simple yet transporting sense of place and character.
Set to a lilting country strum and crying pedal steel, the 1972 song paints a vivid portrait of the bumbling bandit Pancho, his loyal partner Lefty, and the sun-baked Mexican borderlands they roam over the years.
Van Zandt’s grainy, almost conversational delivery naturally shifts between third-person storytelling and spiritual ruminations, drawing listeners into an almost trance-like cinematic realm.
While overlooked upon release, the song’s plaintive devastated atmosphere and picaresque details—not to mention its eventual popularity via the Willie Nelson/Merle Haggard cover—ensured it endures as a rustic folk masterpiece.
3. ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ by Bob Dylan (1975)
Even coming from Bob Dylan’s iconic pen, ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ represented something of a creative reinvention; an elliptical, stream-of-consciousness journey into abstracted romantic reminiscence and existential angst.
The song originated during his spiritual pilgrimage following his divorce, frequenting dive bars and going through an intense period of personal turmoil and muses like Russian novels and avant-garde films.
Those lofty influences fused into lyrics that shattered traditional narratives into impressionistic vignettes, memories blurring together and intermingling in a profoundly poetic yet disorienting fashion.
Over a rollicking acoustic arrangement, Dylan’s unique vocals painted unforgettable multidimensional portraits of lust, remorse, and self-discovery. ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ endures as a landmark of folk music’s evolution.
4. ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ by John Denver (1971)
Like many outsiders before him, John Denver found profound inspiration in the rugged natural beauty and humble charms of West Virginia, immortalizing it in his 1971 crossover smash ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’
Written with frequent collaborators Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, the acoustic folk tune radiates a nostalgic warmth and deep appreciation for the rural experience through vividly earthy lines such as “Life is old there, older than the trees.”
The imagery of winding mountain roads and river valley towns captures the understated scenic splendor and sense of community that can so easily be taken for granted amid modernity’s increasingly disconnected bustle.
The song proved so impactful that West Virginia ultimately made it one of their official state anthems and embraced Denver as one of their own.
5. ‘A Case of You’ by Joni Mitchell (1971)
On her seminal 1971 album Blue, Joni Mitchell established herself as one of contemporary music’s most fearlessly candid and emotionally raw confessional singer-songwriters.
No track showcased her pioneering intimacy and talent for impressionistic poetry quite like the haunting ‘A Case of You.’ Some say it was written about Leonard Cohen, others say it’s about Graham Nash.
The song radiates an aura of unguarded vulnerability and post-breakup melancholy beneath its delicate acoustic guitar arpeggios.
As Mitchell’s unmistakable soprano achingly spirals through evocative lyrics and impressionistic images of “the wind to walk the dirty world,” she touches profound romantic depths.
6. ‘Hurricane’ by Bob Dylan (1976)
Synthesizing his unmatched literary skills as a songwriter with his passion for radical politics, Bob Dylan crafted a searing tour-de-force of protest folk storytelling with ‘Hurricane’ in 1976.
Adapting the real-life story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a top boxer who was wrongfully convicted of murder by a racist justice system, Dylan fuses his two signature modes: prophet and traveling bard.
The track sees him vividly recreating the bloody crime scene in his trademark talking blues tradition, before zooming out to decry the institutionalized racial injustices that led to Carter’s cruel fate over an ominously strummed acoustic guitar.
Dylan dramatizes the flawed trial process and celebrates Carter’s perseverant humanity through sharply poetic yet conversational language, his distinctive snarl boiling over into righteous indignation.
More than a mere true crime story, ‘Hurricane’ laid bare how dehumanization and bigotry can infect society on a systemic level with brazen clarity.
7. ‘Diamonds and Rust’ by Joan Baez (1975)
Drawing inspiration from her iconic romance with Bob Dylan in the 1960s, Joan Baez created one of folk music’s most exquisitely poetic and emotionally layered compositions with her 1975 masterpiece ‘Diamonds and Rust.’
Over a hypnotic finger-picked acoustic guitar pattern, Baez’s voice shimmers with the visceral memories of an epic love affair through gonzo tour vignettes and symbolic lyricism told from years of wistful hindsight.
Hauntingly enigmatic opening lines like “Well I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again” immediately evoke mysterious psychic depths before flowing into wrenching romantic couplets tinged with disillusionment.
While nostalgic, Baez’s narrator possesses a seasoned perspective that’s both wounded and enlightened about love’s ever-shifting complexities.
8. ‘Southbound Train’ by David Crosby and Graham Nash (1972)
David Crosby and Graham Nash transformed their passionate anti-war activism into profound and unsettling folk poetry on the 1972 dirge ‘Southbound Train.’
Buoyed by gorgeous multi-part vocal harmonies set to plaintive acoustic guitar arpeggios, the men inhabit the voice of a train conductor solemnly transporting fallen soldiers home from the battlefield.
“Can you carry the torch that’ll bring home the dead? / To the land of their fathers whose lives you have led,” they harmonize with penetrating empathy and imagery.
Yet Crosby and Nash’s pacifist message never devolves into didacticism, instead evoking the eternal nobility of the grieving process and mourning the systemic societal rot that throws young men’s lives away needlessly in the first place.
The tastefully understated lament captures the seismic tragedy and psychological tolls of warfare from a unique everyman’s perspective.
9. ‘Fire and Rain’ by James Taylor (1970)
James Taylor exemplified folk’s poetic capability to distill life’s most painful emotional truths into understated musical wisdom on his unguardedly autobiographical 1970 classic ‘Fire and Rain.’
Over gentle acoustic guitar picking and a hazy instrumental ambiance, Taylor’s warm tenor recounts episodes like his friend’s suicide and his own struggles with depression and drug addiction in devastatingly personal yet universal terms.
Despite lyrics about suicide, Taylor avoids lurid exaggeration or woe-is-me navel-gazing. Rather, the deeply felt verses bloom with poignant imagery and self-analysis that’s accepting yet guarded (“I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend”).
It’s a deceptively mellow backdrop for such life-shattering events, creating a masterful juxtaposition between presentation and revelation that allowed generations to find blunt catharsis in Taylor’s burnished poetry.
10. ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ by Leonard Cohen (1971)
Leonard Cohen reached his peak powers as a songwriting mystic and luxuriant craftsman of metaphor on the hypnotic ‘Famous Blue Raincoat,’ the centerpiece of his 1971 album Songs of Love and Hate.
Addressed directly to a gloating ex-lover caught in a tryst with Cohen’s married partner Suzanne, the song unfolds in a series of freeform yet stunningly vivid poetic vignettes fueled by bitter erotic jealousy and hard-earned spiritual transcendence.
A song seething with postmodern emotionality, psychological intricacy, and world-weary symbolism, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ highlights Cohen’s singular ability to elevate the minutiae of romance into timeless poetic cinema.
11. ‘Wild World’ by Cat Stevens (1970)
Cat Stevens’ 1970 breakthrough hit ‘Wild World’ remains beloved today for its effortlessly gorgeous folk-pop melody and evocative sketches of lovelorn melancholy.
Written in the wake of his split from actress Patti D’Arbanville, the track’s theme of being cast out into life’s harsher realities on one’s own resonated immediately with the counterculture’s spiritual transience and emotional yearnings.
Stevens’ airy, pleading vocals capture devastation beneath the song’s breezy orchestration, reminiscing on a lost lover’s “child-like vision of sandless and stray” over bedrock acoustic guitar fingerpicking.
But it’s the ineffably wistful tune and atmospheric golden-hued production that have allowed ‘Wild World’ to permeate generations of pop consciousness far beyond its poetic folk origins, finding new life in film and TV wherever vulnerability and nostalgia intertwine.
12. ‘Gallows Pole’ by Led Zeppelin (1970)
Even amidst their monolithic success as one of the 1970’s biggest arena-slaying hard rock bands, Led Zeppelin displayed a jaw-dropping sense of folk dynamism and humble mysticism on ‘Gallows Pole.’
Built around a rambling minor-key acoustic drone and loosely based on the 17th-century poem “The Maid Freed From The Gallows,” Robert Plant whispers haunted pagan imagery of hangman’s nooses, scythe-wielding reapers, and condemned maidens crawling toward an unsavory fate.
It’s an utterly transportive vision of pre-industrial folklore brought to chest-pounding heavy life, with John Bonham’s thunderous tribal rhythms and Jimmy Page’s spiraling drone riffs conjuring visions of some eldritch Druidic purging. Rarely have the mystical origins of English folk tradition and blues met with such transformative yet faithful power!
Plant’s wails eventually escalate into full heavy metal roars, but even within the famously intimidating scope of Zeppelin’s catalog, the naked eeriness and fearsome emotional heft of ‘Gallows Pole’ stands apart as a true rock anomaly.
13. ‘Our House’ by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970)
The flagship supergroup of Laurel Canyon’s heralded singer-songwriter scene radiated the idyllic communal virtues and homespun creative energy of its famous locale on ‘Our House,’ a lighthearted yet profoundly intimate folk-pop anthem.
Written by Graham Nash during a trip to buy a decorative vase with partner Joni Mitchell for the rustic cottage abode they shared, the song revels in the simple domesticities of creating a private sanctuary away from CSNY’s whirlwind success and the era’s societal turmoil.
Its singalong chorus celebrates universal desires for love’s unconditional comfort: “Our house is a very, very, very fine house”. But Nash roots the sentiment in quotidian details like lighting fires and leaving windows open to let in a cool breeze.
In enshrining the scene’s grassroots idealism, ‘Our House’ served as both a dreamy aspirational vision and a defiant counterculture manifesto.
14. ‘It’s Too Late’ by Carole King (1971)
King’s emotional masterwork ‘It’s Too Late’ remains one of the most devastating yet empowering explorations of romantic heartbreak in the entire pop/folk canon.
From her legendary Tapestry album, the song sees King capturing the precise moment when a relationship’s rupture becomes inescapable and irreparable through candid, autobiographical poetry.
“It used to be so easy, livin’ here with you. You were light and breezy, and I knew just what to do. Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool,” she laments with a searing intimacy mirroring the vulnerability of diary entries.
Yet King’s narrative perspective, along with her singing, remains remarkably resilient and self-possessed even as she unflinchingly anatomizes every slight and betrayal leading to love’s demise.
It’s an extraordinarily brave artistic statement that elevates achingly personal turmoil into a universal monument to truth and feminine perseverance.
15. ‘Sam Stone’ by John Prine (1971)
John Prine was already staking his claim as folk’s preeminent tragedian on his acclaimed self-titled 1971 debut album. But it was the harrowing character study of ‘Sam Stone,’ with its searing depiction of a drug-addicted Vietnam veteran’s psychological deterioration, that made his humane storytelling powers unmistakable.
Written during the height of anti-war activism, Prine fully inhabits the fractured psyche and mundane routines of the haunted title character, recounting his heroin binges, alienation from his family, and lingering wounds over a sardonically uptempo folk-rock shuffle.
“There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” Prine sings, his avuncular delivery amplifying the pathos of Stone slowly disintegrating physically and mentally before our ears.
While never romanticizing battlefield trauma, the songwriter approaches his subject’s directionless nihilism and self-destruction with an almost spiritual empathy and understanding that any glorification of armed conflict is itself an unforgivable obscenity.