Changes

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“Changes” was written in 1965 by Phil Ochs, the fiery Greenwich Village folk singer who called himself a “singing journalist” — he’d actually started out studying journalism before deciding a guitar was mightier than the pen. Ochs was famous for his protest songs (“I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Draft Dodger Rag”), which made “Changes” a genuine shock to his audience: it contains no politics at all. Instead, it’s a quiet, aching meditation on impermanence — seasons turning, love fading, time moving — and it revealed that the movement’s sharpest topical writer was also one of its most tender poets. He introduced it on his 1966 live album Phil Ochs in Concert, and it quickly became one of his most beloved songs.

The song traveled in some surprising directions. British pop singer Crispian St. Peters (of “The Pied Piper” fame) took “Changes” onto both the US and UK charts in 1966, and folk artists like Gordon Lightfoot and Ian & Sylvia recorded it too. Strangest of all: in 1971, a Swedish version called “En Kväll om Sommarn” was recorded by Anni-Frid Lyngstad — who just a few years later became world-famous as Frida of ABBA. Ochs himself never found the fame of his friend and rival Bob Dylan, and his life ended tragically young in 1976, at just 35. But “Changes” endures as perhaps his most personal legacy — proof that the great protest singer’s deepest song was about the one thing no one can protest: time itself.