Bob Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” – one of his greatest compositions – during the summer of 1962. Although it is often linked with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dylan formally premiered “A Hard Rain’s” during a hootenanny organized by Pete Seeger at Carnegie Hall on September 22, 1962, a month before President Kennedy’s national address.

Rolling Stone ranked “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” as the second greatest Bob Dylan song. When they asked Dylan about his mindset when he was writing it, he responded that he wanted to write each line like it was the start of a new song.

When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, his friend Patti Smith sung this song at the award ceremony.