29 Best Songs About Wind & Windy Days

When it comes to songs about wind, many songwriters have mined the subject for metaphors and similes that make the wind so much more than the background noise of a nature hike. Of course, some talk about actual windy days too. Here are the best songs about wind ever.

1. Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan

Song Year: 1963

Though Bob Dylan’s song catalog is enormous, Blowin’ In the Wind might be the most iconic one. Dylan uses wind as a metaphor in the song, posing questions related to the uneasy state of the world in the 1960s. The wind is where the answers to society’s issues can be found. The idea is that solutions are simple and natural. We just have to look for them.

2. Candle in the Wind by Elton John

Song Year: 1974

Candle in the Wind was supposed to be the next single from Elton John’s smash-hit album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. But his next effort, Caribou, was ready for release, and Goodbye had already spawned hits with its title track and Bennie and the Jets, so the record label decided to release a new album rather than another single.

That’s too bad, because Candle in the Wind is a beautiful tribute to the fragility of life, especially when viewed through the lens of the cautionary tale that was the life of Marilyn Monroe, the song’s subject.

Following the death of Princess Diana, Sir Elton rerecorded it as Goodbye England’s Rose, which hit number one globally and sold 33 million copies.

3. Dust in the Wind by Kansas

Song Year: 1978

Inspired by a Bible verse from the Old Testament, Dust in the Wind is a beautiful piece of music. Its lyrics are kind of a bummer, but it’s very pretty.

Kansas guitarist Kerry Livgren wrote the song almost accidentally, as he was just trying to create a fingering exercise for his own guitar practice. The song was vastly different from other Kansas material, but it worked, as Dust in the Wind would be the band’s only Top Ten hit.

4. The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix

Song Year: 1967

After an argument with his girlfriend Kathy (the same woman who inspired Fire), Jimi Hendrix wrote The Wind Cries Mary perhaps as an apology. The surrealist lyrics take some unpacking, but overall, they presage loss, as if Hendrix was afraid Kathy was gone for good.

The album version we hear was introduced to the band and fully recorded in 20 minutes of downtime at the studio.

5. Against the Wind by Bob Seger

Song Year: 1980

Bob Seger ran cross-country in high school, and those days of training brought him the idea at the root of Against the Wind. The song is about getting older and watching things change, but it was inspired by those days when, in training, Seger would find himself running against the wind, which made the run more difficult than when the wind was at his back.

As our lives move forward, there are external forces— metaphorical wind— pushing against us. The things that we really want are things we have to work for. And we have to work against those forces.

6. Wind Of Change by Scorpions

Song Year: 1990

As the Soviet Union was nearing collapse and the Berlin Wall had fallen, the world was rapidly changing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Scorpions’ frontman Klaus Meine, while spending time in Moscow, penned Wind of Change to comment on the social upheaval that would characterize the end of the second millennium.

The German-based band gave the world a power ballad that remains one of the best-selling singles of all time and holds the honor of being the biggest single ever from a German act.

7. Colors of the Wind by Vanessa Williams

Song Year: 1995

Written by Alan Menken for Disney’s Pocahontas, Colors of the Wind is a song inspired by the writings of Chief Seattle. It plays over the film’s closing credits and offers advice to everyone to pay attention to the world around them.

The interconnected nature of the world ties us all together, whether our fate is to flourish or drive ourselves to extinction.

8. Four Strong Winds by Neil Young

Song Year: 1978

Folk singer Ian Tyson wrote Four String Winds in the 1960s for his own folk act Ian and Sylvia. Neil Young recorded it more than a decade later, and it has since become a staple of his live shows.

The winds in the title are the north, south, east, and west winds— things that never change, along with the seven seas. But for the narrator, everything else changes and eventually ends. In this case, his and his girl’s relationship has ended. He refers to trying to rekindle things, but he seems resigned that that won’t happen.

9. Easy Wind by The Grateful Dead

Song Year: 1970

Easy Wind is about a regular Joe working man knocking about the country working, drinking, and whoring. It’s not a song for kids.

It also almost doesn’t fit on Workingman’s Dead, the album that contained it. The other songs are gentler, less in-your-face, but the narrator character in this song might just be the exact workingman in the album’s title. He does, after all, have some Everyman qualities.

10. Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross

Song Year: 1980

Using simile, Christopher Cross conveys the sense of urgency felt by the protagonist in Ride Like the Wind. As a wanted criminal, he’s fleeing from (probably) a posse, and he understands that speed is of the essence.

On top of the posse on his trail, he is far from his destination of the Mexican border, the crossing of which will put him out of reach of the lawmen who want to bring him to justice.

A quintessential example of yacht rock, Ride Like the Wind made it all the way to number two. Not bad for a debut single.