[media=https://youtu.be/jWuk_R2_Iu4] Bob Dylan paints a bleak picture of the world in his song, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”.
The singer-songwriter uses dark imagery in the song and draws its question-and-answer lyrical structure from “Lord Randall”, an old Anglo-Scottish ballad that tells the tale of a nobleman who becomes deathly ill after he’s served a poisoned meal by his ladylove.
Some believe “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” was written in response to the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and Dylan reportedly has suggested this at times. In reality, the song was written prior to the US–Soviet confrontation. Dylan even gave a public performance of the song a few weeks before it happened.
But regardless of what inspired Dylan to write the song or when he wrote it, the dystopian theme of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" undoubtedly resonated with Cold War-era audiences, concerned about the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war and its attendant horrors.
Though times have changed (at least to some extent), “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” remains a powerful song in the present day.
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