Top Songs by Bob Dylan on Acoustic Guitar

Welcome to my top songs by Bob Dylan page, where you’ll find 29 of my own acoustic arrangements of Dylan’s music, from the early folk of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1963 to the rockabilly drive of Modern Times in 2006. Alongside classics like Blowin’ in the Wind, Like a Rolling Stone and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,

I’ve included some deeper cuts that are a joy to play, such as Abandoned Love, Blind Willie McTell and Country Pie. Start with the three overview videos to hear a short clip from every lesson, then try the free demos for Blowin’ in the Wind and You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.

Each full lesson comes with an 8–12 minute HD video and a printable chords and lyrics PDF, and every purchase helps support the channel.

Abandoned Love was recorded in July 1975 during the New York sessions for Desire, but Dylan left it off the album and it sat in the vault for ten years.

It finally came out on Biograph, the 1985 box set that mixed hits with unreleased material, and fans quickly ranked it among the best of the Desire-era outtakes. Its only known live performance came that same July. Dylan reportedly walked onstage at The Other End in Greenwich Village (the renamed Bitter End) during a set by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and played it for a surprised crowd.

It was never released as a single. The Everly Brothers recorded it for their 1986 album Born Yesterday, which gave the lost song a second life.

All Along The Watchtower came out of a quiet period at the end of 1967. According to biographer Clinton Heylin, Dylan wrote and recorded all of John Wesley Harding in about six weeks.

He cut this song on November 6, 1967, at Columbia Studio A in Nashville, playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, with Nashville veterans from the Blonde on Blonde sessions backing him. Columbia released it as a single on November 22, 1968, with “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” on the B-side, but it failed to chart.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience version from Electric Ladyland charted at No. 5 in the UK and No. 20 in the US. Dylan has admitted that he now plays the song in Hendrix’s style rather than the way he first recorded it.

Blind Willie McTell is one of the great “lost” Dylan recordings. He cut it in New York in spring 1983 during the Infidels sessions, with Dylan on piano and Mark Knopfler on acoustic guitar.

Then he surprised his collaborators by leaving it off the album. It stayed unreleased until 1991, when it appeared on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991, and critics now rank it among his finest songs of the decade.

The melody leans on the old standard “St. James Infirmary.” The lyric uses the Georgia bluesman’s name to frame a wide picture of the American South and its painful history. The Band recorded it for Jericho in 1993, and Dylan began playing it in concert in the late 1990s.

Blowin' In The Wind was written in April 1962 and opened The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in May 1963. Dylan based the melody on the old spiritual “No More Auction Block,” a debt he later acknowledged.

His own single, backed with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” did not chart. Peter, Paul and Mary’s version reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 that summer and carried the song around the world. The trio also sang it at the March on Washington in August 1963, the same day Dylan performed other songs from that stage.

Within months the song had become an anthem of the civil rights movement, and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1994.

Country Pie is the shortest and sunniest moment on Nashville Skyline, Dylan’s 1969 country album. It runs just over 90 seconds and name-drops the nursery rhyme character Little Jack Horner.

It was recorded on February 14, 1969, with Charlie Daniels on guitar, Bob Wilson on piano and Bob Johnston producing. The lyric is pure play, a celebration of simple country pleasures. In October 1969 it was released as the B-side of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You.” Dylan waited three decades to play it live.

It finally turned up on his spring 2000 tour, and it became a live staple later in his career. Charlie Daniels covered it on Off the Grid in 2014.

Don't Think Twice It's All Right was released in May 1963 on Bob Dylan's second studio album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Written in 1962, the song was inspired partly by Dylan's relationship with Suze Rotolo, who had extended her stay in Italy. Its bittersweet lyrics capture the frustration, resignation and lingering affection of a relationship coming to an end.

The melody drew inspiration from folk singer Paul Clayton's "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone)," itself adapted from an older traditional song. Dylan's distinctive fingerpicked acoustic guitar gives the recording its gentle, flowing character.

The song became a folk standard, with Peter, Paul and Mary taking their 1963 version into the Billboard Top 10, helping introduce Dylan's songwriting to a wider audience.

Forever Young first appeared in two versions on Planet Waves, one slow and one fast. Dylan recorded it with The Band, and the album came out in January 1974.

In the Biograph notes, Dylan said he wrote it in Tucson while thinking about one of his sons and trying not to be too sentimental. Accounts differ on which son, Jesse (born 1966) or Jakob (born 1969). The master takes were cut at the Village Recorder in Santa Monica on November 14, 1973.

A June 1973 demo later appeared on Biograph, and Dylan and The Band performed the song at The Last Waltz in 1976. A live version from Tokyo was released as a European single in 1979. Rod Stewart’s 1988 song of the same name was close enough that Dylan is credited among its writers.

Gotta Serve Somebody opened Slow Train Coming in August 1979, the first album Dylan made after his conversion to Christianity. It was recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound in Alabama with producers Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett, and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits played guitar on the sessions.

The song sets a tight, bluesy groove under a blunt message: whoever you are, you answer to someone. Released as a single, it reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also won Dylan the 1980 Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, and he performed it on Saturday Night Live that October.

Not everyone was won over. John Lennon answered with a sarcastic home demo called “Serve Yourself,” which was released after his death.

I Want You was released as a single in June 1966 and appeared on Bob Dylan's landmark double album, Blonde on Blonde. Recorded in Nashville with producer Bob Johnston, the song reached #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #16 on the UK Singles Chart.

With its bright, upbeat melody and driving rhythm, "I Want You" contrasts its cheerful musical arrangement with Dylan's surreal, sometimes mysterious lyrics about romantic longing and desire. The recording features Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica alongside organ, piano, electric guitar and a lively rhythm section.

The song became one of Dylan's most accessible recordings of the mid-1960s and was included on his 1967 Greatest Hits album. He later performed it in several different arrangements during his concert tours.

If You See Her Say Hello is one of the tender centerpieces of Blood on the Tracks (1975), written as Dylan’s marriage to Sara Lownds was coming apart. He first recorded it in New York in September 1974.

That December he re-recorded five of the album’s songs in Minneapolis with local musicians, and this was one of them. The Minneapolis take is the one on the album, and the song also served as the B-side of the “Tangled Up in Blue” single.

On the 1976 Rolling Thunder tour, Dylan rewrote parts of the lyric into something much more bitter, a sign of how his feelings had changed. The original New York take finally appeared in 2018 on More Blood, More Tracks.

It Takes A Lot To Laugh It Takes A Train To Cry was released in August 1965 on Bob Dylan's landmark album, Highway 61 Revisited. Originally developed under the working title "Phantom Engineer," the song began as a faster blues-rock number before Dylan reworked it into the slower, relaxed shuffle heard on the album.

Dylan performed an earlier, more energetic version during his controversial electric appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The final studio recording, produced by Bob Johnston in New York on July 29, features a laid-back blues groove with piano, electric guitar and harmonica.

Drawing on traditional blues imagery, the lyrics combine trains, moonlight, romantic longing and restless travel, creating one of Dylan's most atmospheric blues performances.

Jokerman is the opening track of Infidels (1983). It was recorded on April 14, 1983, at the Power Station in New York, with Mark Knopfler and Dylan producing. Jamaica’s famous rhythm section, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, gives it a reggae lilt.

Dylan said the song was loosely inspired by Caribbean spirits called jumbis. Its video came out on March 27, 1984, directed by George Lois and produced by Larry Sloman. The video put the lyrics on screen over a stream of images, and Dylan himself appears only during the chorus.

His first live performance of the song was on Late Night with David Letterman on March 22, 1984. It was released as a single but failed to chart.

Just Like A Woman was recorded in Nashville in March 1966 for Blonde on Blonde, the double album many critics consider Dylan’s peak. Released as a US single that summer, it reached No. 33 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In Britain it became a hit for someone else when Manfred Mann took their version into the Top 10 in 1966. The lyric has been debated for decades. Some listeners hear tenderness and others hear condescension, which makes it one of the most argued-over songs in his catalog.

It has been covered by artists as different as Nina Simone, Richie Havens and Jeff Buckley, and Dylan has kept it in his live shows for decades.

Knocking On Heavens Door was written for Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in which Dylan also played the character Alias.

The lyric has only two verses, written for the scene where Slim Pickens’ Sheriff Colin Baker is shot and killed. Dylan recorded the final version that February on a Warner Brothers soundstage in Burbank. Roger McGuinn played guitar and Jim Keltner played drums, with Carol Hunter, Donna Weiss and Brenda Patterson singing backup.

It peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 14 in the UK. Keltner later said it was the first time he ever cried while playing. Eric Clapton and Guns N’ Roses both had hits with their own versions.

Lay Lady Lay was written for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack but wasn’t submitted in time to be used in the film. In a 1971 interview with Tony Glover,

Dylan added that he had written it for Barbra Streisand. On Nashville Skyline (1969) it became a hit, reaching No. 7 in the US and No. 5 in the UK. Drummer Kenny Buttrey couldn’t find a part for it. Dylan suggested bongos and producer Bob Johnston suggested cowbells, so Buttrey used both, with Kris Kristofferson, then working as a studio janitor, holding the bongos in one hand and the cowbell in the other.

The Everly Brothers recorded it in 1984. A long-running myth says they had turned it down in the 1960s, but Don Everly later explained they simply hadn’t realized Dylan was offering it to them.

License To Kill is one of the darker tracks on Infidels (1983). It is a warning about mankind’s urge to conquer and the damage that urge leaves behind, with a pointed nod to the moon landing.

Dylan co-produced it with Mark Knopfler, and it sits beside “Jokerman” and “Sweetheart Like You” on an album many fans see as his return to secular songwriting after his gospel years. It was never a single. Dylan chose it for his memorable Late Night with David Letterman appearance in March 1984, backed by members of the Los Angeles punk band The Plugz.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers later played it at the 1992 Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in New York, which shows how highly his peers rated it.

Like A Rolling Stone started as a long, rambling piece of writing that Dylan cut down into a six-minute single, which was unheard of for radio in 1965.

He recorded it in New York that June with producer Tom Wilson. The famous organ part came from Al Kooper, who was booked as a guitarist but sat down at the organ and improvised. Released in July 1965 ahead of Highway 61 Revisited, it climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, kept from the top by the Beatles’ “Help!”

Rolling Stone named it the greatest song of all time in 2004. In 2013 it finally got an official video, an interactive clip by Vania Heymann that let viewers flip through 16 TV channels, each with someone lip-syncing the words.

My Back Pages comes from Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), an album recorded in one long night-time session in New York that June. In it Dylan looks back on his protest-song years with gentle self-mockery, suggesting the certainty of his younger self had made him older than he really was.

It wasn’t released as a single, and he didn’t play it in concert until 1988. The Byrds turned it into a jangling folk-rock single in 1967, their last US Top 40 hit. At the 1992 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, Dylan traded verses with Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and George Harrison.

That performance appears on the 1993 album of the show. Covers also include the Ramones, Steve Earle and Keith Jarrett.

Not Dark Yet is the brooding heart of Time Out of Mind, the 1997 album that started Dylan’s late-career revival and won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Producer Daniel Lanois said the demo was faster and more stripped down, until Dylan turned it into a Civil War ballad in the studio. The recording sessions were held at Criteria Studios in Miami in January and February 1997. It was released as the album’s lead single on August 25, 1997, and critics praised it.

Many heard it as a meditation on age and mortality. Dylan played it live 152 times, the last in 2012. It was later included on the Wonder Boys soundtrack and on the album Songs Inspired by The Passion of the Christ.

Positively 4th Street was recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but held back for a single-only release. The master take was cut in New York on July 29, 1965. The single came out that September and reached No. 1 on Canada’s RPM chart, No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 8 in the UK.

The title never appears in the lyric, and listeners have spent decades guessing who the bitter put-down was aimed at. Folk-scene critics from Greenwich Village are a common suspect. Some early copies were mis-pressed with an outtake of “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” on the A-side.

Its first album appearance was Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits in 1967. In Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote that he preferred Johnny Rivers’ version to his own.

Shelter From The Storm is one of the Blood on the Tracks (1975) songs kept from Dylan’s original New York sessions of September 1974, rather than re-recorded in Minneapolis.

Over a simple, repeating acoustic pattern, the narrator describes finding refuge with a woman after a long, battering journey. The lyric is full of biblical and mythic images. It was never a single, but it became one of the album’s best-loved tracks. A fierce electric version from the 1976 Rolling Thunder tour appears on the live album Hard Rain, and it shows how differently Dylan could approach the same song.

An alternate studio take was later used on the Jerry Maguire soundtrack in 1996, which introduced the song to a new audience.

Sweetheart Like You was recorded on April 18, 1983, and released as a single that December with “Union Sundown” on the B-side. Mark Knopfler co-produced the Infidels sessions, and Sly Dunbar played drums.

The single peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 on January 28, 1984, and spent nine weeks on the chart. Its video is considered Dylan’s first official music video.

It was directed by Mark Robinson. As thanks for appearing in it, Dylan reportedly gave guitarist Carla Olson the then-unreleased “Clean Cut Kid,” which her band The Textones released on their 1984 album Midnight Mission. Some critics objected to how the lyric talks about women.

Tangled Up In Blue opens Blood on the Tracks (1975) and is often named among Dylan’s greatest story songs.

The narrative jumps between places, years and points of view, so the listener is never quite sure who is speaking or when. Dylan first recorded it in New York in September 1974, then re-recorded it in Minneapolis that December, and the Minneapolis take made the album.

Released as a single in early 1975, it reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100. He has rewritten the lyric many times on stage, and the 1984 live album Real Live has a heavily revised version. Dylan once joked that the song took ten years to live and two years to write.

The Man In Me comes from New Morning, released in October 1970 just months after the poorly reviewed Self Portrait. Critics welcomed New Morning as a return to form.

Recorded in New York that summer, the song is a warm, simple love song, opened by a wordless “la la la” hook and carried by gospel-flavored backing vocals. It was never a single and got little attention for almost three decades. That changed in 1998, when Joel and Ethan Coen featured it prominently in The Big Lebowski.

The song became tied to Jeff Bridges’ character, the Dude, and found a whole new generation of listeners who had never heard New Morning.

The Times They Are A Changing is the title track of Dylan’s third album, recorded in New York in October 1963 and released in January 1964.

In the Biograph notes, Dylan said he deliberately set out to write a big song with short, direct verses. The result became an anthem for a generation pushing against the old order. In Britain the single reached the Top 10 in 1965. Its influence went well beyond folk music. Steve Jobs recited a verse at Apple’s January 1984 shareholders meeting, the event where the Macintosh was unveiled.

The song has been recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, Nina Simone and many others, and Dylan performed it at the White House in 2010.

Thunder On The Mountain opens Modern Times (2006). Dylan recorded the album at Clinton Recording in New York and produced it under his pseudonym Jack Frost.

The song is full of biblical allusions, starting with the title. Its much-discussed Alicia Keys verse adapts Memphis Minnie’s lyrics, swapping in Keys and Hell’s Kitchen for Ma Rainey and her Georgia birthplace. It wasn’t released as a single in the US, but it spent nine weeks on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Songs chart, peaking at No. 22 in January 2007.

Its video set the song to vintage footage of Dylan. Modern Times reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200, Dylan’s first chart-topper since Desire in 1976.

With God On Our Side appears on The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964) and is one of Dylan’s sharpest protest songs. Verse by verse, it moves through American history, from the wars against Native Americans to the Cold War, and questions the idea that God takes sides in a nation’s battles.

The melody is borrowed from Dominic Behan’s Irish song “The Patriot Game,” which itself used an older traditional air, and Behan publicly complained about the borrowing.

Dylan sang it as a duet with Joan Baez at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, months before the album came out, and Baez kept it in her own concerts. The Neville Brothers later recorded a well-known version on Yellow Moon (1989).

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere was born in 1967 during the relaxed Woodstock basement sessions with the musicians who became The Band, while Dylan was recovering from his motorcycle accident.

The playful, half-nonsense lyric suited that loose atmosphere. The Byrds heard the demo and recorded it for Sweetheart of the Rodeo in 1968, and their single helped steer rock toward country. Dylan’s own first official release came in 1971, when he re-recorded it with Happy Traum for Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II, slipping in a cheeky line naming Roger McGuinn.

The original basement version appeared on The Basement Tapes in 1975, and the complete sessions came out in 2014 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 11.

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go is the lightest-footed song on Blood on the Tracks (1975), and one of the tracks kept from the original New York sessions of September 1974. Over a bright acoustic strum and harmonica, Dylan sings about a love he already suspects won’t last, with place names from Ashtabula to Honolulu.

Many writers connect it to Ellen Bernstein, a Columbia Records employee he was seeing at the time, rather than to his marriage.

It was never a single, but it has drawn well-regarded covers from Shawn Colvin, Madeleine Peyroux and Miley Cyrus. Cyrus’s 2012 version appeared on Chimes of Freedom, Amnesty International’s 50th-anniversary tribute album of Dylan songs.

Kirby Swinemar is an acoustic guitar instructor, performer and song arranger who has taught online for 21 years and created more than 4,000 original acoustic guitar lessons. He specialises in song-based acoustic guitar instruction, rhythm guitar techniques, and creating full-sounding solo arrangements that help beginner and intermediate players move beyond basic strumming.

Explore more of Kirby's work at Kirby's Guitar Lessons, watch his performances and tutorials on his YouTube Channel or follow him on Facebook. You can also learn more about his teaching background on the About Me page.