Emily Zemler
View all posts by Emily Zemler May 28, 2026
Joan Baez Noam Galai/Getty Images for Tibet House US Joan Baez said she wishes modern-day pop musicians would use their platforms to speak up about political and social issues.
During an interview on the podcast Wiser Than Me With Julia Louis-Dreyfus, host Julia Louis-Dreyfus asked Baez about her feelings on younger artists who haven’t voiced concerns about the abuses of the Trump administration. “There’s a whole generation of really talented artists who are quite silent about the current assault on democracy,” Louis-Dreyfus said. “Do you find that unbelievably frustrating or do you understand, perhaps, where those artists are coming from?”
“I think I understand where they’re coming from,” Baez replied. “It’s revealing that the one song that’s used in all of these demonstrations is ‘The Times They Are a-Changin.’ The level of that writing from back then hasn’t been approached. No one has approached it. You can’t summon that up, I don’t think.”
She added, “The young people right now, some are writing amazing stuff. A few are willing to speak out. Brandi Carlile is. And Maggie Rogers, my pal, put [it] right out there front and center on the stage at a rally against ICE. I sort of cock my head at these stadiums filled with brilliant young women songwriters, and why can’t they just take that little step? Because they’re already richer than God, you know, most of them. So, that little step.”
Louis-Dreyfus then asked Baez what she wishes she had known about activism when she was younger. “What comes to my mind is not about activism, it’s about the singing,” Baez said. She recounted performing for the Shriners during high school. “I don’t know what I sang, but I sang something for the Shriners and they got quiet and they actually listened,” she remembered. “Some old guy came up to me afterwards and he said, ‘You know honey, don’t sign cheap. You’re okay honey, you’re going to do good.'”
