Joan Baez changes lyrics to ‘America the Beautiful’ as she supports Kamala Harris

Folk musician encouraged her followers to ‘VOTE BLUE’ as she shared the pared-back recording

Legendary singer-songwriter Joan Baez has urged fans to register to vote in the looming US election, as she expressed her support for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The folk musician and activist, 83, shared a video of herself singing “America the Beautiful” on Sunday (28 July), as she played an acoustic guitar.

In the moving pared-back rendition, she changed the original lyrics of “Crown thy good with brotherhood” to “Crown thy good with sisterhood”, in an apparent show of solidarity with Harris.

Joan Baez sang ‘America the Beautiful’ as she changed the lyrics to support Kamala Harris (Instagram/Joan Baez)

She captioned the clip: “Times are a-changin’... Let’s crown thy good good with sisterhood. Register to vote at vote.org or headcount.org and VOTE BLUE!”

Her post comes after she made a surprise appearance at Newport Folk Festival on Friday (26 July) where she joined Irish musician Hozier along with Mavis Staples, Nathaniel Rateliff, Alison Russell and Madison Cunningham to sing The Band’s classic 1968 single “The Weight”.

The set concluded with Baez singing an acoustic version of “We Shall Overcome” with Kaia Kater and William Prince.

In a recent interview with The Independent, Baez expressed her fears for the future of humanity amid the climate crisis, commenting: “Mother Earth is in a rage, and you can’t really blame her.”

“I don’t want to have my life dictated by fear, but sometimes it’s just overwhelming to wake up at night and think ‘What, if anything, is there going to be for my granddaughter?’” she asked.

“Possibly nothing? We may be gone. I have a really black joke that I made up: we will be lucky if we get eliminated by climate change, because then Trump won’t have time to set up death camps. It’s pretty awful, but it’s true.”

Joan Baez: ‘We’re fighting uphill against an avalanche of evil, sadism and bullying’ (Dana Tynan)

Harris has received a wave of support from a number of prominent figures across music and entertainment, including Katy Perry and Ariana Grande. She also received an endorsement from British pop star Charli XCX, prompting a flurry of memes and viral TikToks.

Last week, Harris’s campaign revealed that she would be using Beyoncé’s song “Freedom”, an anthem inspired by America’s history of civil rights, as her official campaign song.

Baez is due to be portrayed by actor Monica Barbaro in the forthcoming biopic, A Complete Unknown, about Bob Dylan’s rise to fame and his infamous switch to electric instruments on 25 July, 1965.

Dylan is being portrayed by Timothee Chalamet, who also serves as producer.

The film is scheduled for release in the UK in January 2025.