My 30 Favorite Neil Young Songs

Neil Young has recently caused some hubbub in the music media world. I honestly haven't heard a lot of actual people talk about it, but every music media outlet has made this their top story for the past 2 weeks. Neil Young asked Spotify to choose between either keeping his music on there or keeping Joe Rogan's podcasts. A a result, Neil's music is no longer on Spotify. 

If I'm not mistaken, Neil is mad at Spotify for being a medium for misinformation, and targets Rogan as the main cist. I mean, I've never actually said anything about Joe Rogan in any conversation I've ever had with anyone before in my life. Aside from the fact that I don't like him, I don't think I have anything to say about him in a blog post about Neil Young songs. I personally just use Spotify a lot. And I own a few Neil Young albums. So all this media buzz around him kinda just makes me wonder if I've taken his music career for granted.

I brainstormed a rough-draft list of my personal favorite Neil Young songs, and it somehow magically stopped at 30, so I'm running with that perfect coincidence. Neil's discography doesn't make a ton of sense. There are even a few Neil tracks regarded as "classics" by fans that I've yet to come across, because they're on random B-side compilations or whatever. But I was introduced to Neil via classic rock radio as a kid, and I've considered him one of the greatest artists of all time since my early college days. Still in recent years, I've tried out stuff from him I never knew existed. And pretty much everything he touched from '69-'79 was pure gold. 

I'm gonna make the actual list-viewing process short and snappy. No asterisks, no blurbs. Some of these are with Crazy Horse. I slapped a couple CSNY tracks at the bottom, since they're kinda-sorta "technically" Neil Young songs. I'll wrap it up with a couple paragraphs at the bottom.

30 Hitchhiker  

29 Helpless

28 Like a Hurricane

27 Ohio

26 Harvest

25 Alabama

24 Borrowed Tune

23 Albuquerque

22 Don't Be Denied

21 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

20 I Believe in You

19 Winterlong

18 Cowgirl in the Sand

17 The Needle and the Damage Done

16 Only Love Can Break Your Heart

15 Old Man

14 Pocahontas

13 Walk On

12 Powderfinger

11 Round & Round (It Won't Be Long)

10 On the Beach

9 Southern Man

8 Out on the Weekend

7 Down by the River

6 My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)

5 Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

4 After the Gold Rush

3 Ambulance Blues

2 Cortez the Killer

1 Tell Me Why

The one irony I will add about Neil Young's Spotify debacle is that you if there are any songs on this list you've never heard, you can just find them on YouTube anyways. And maybe somebody should tell Neil that Joe Rogan is also on YouTube.

Anyways, as for the songs, Neil is an incredible artist. Some of these are folksy singer-songwriter ditties. Some of these are the most distorted rock songs ever made. He covers a lot of lyrical topics without sounding too refined or preachy. Just some raw and real thoughts and emotions. Of course he has more great songs than this. But these are tracks that I remember striking a chord with me upon first listen, or have grown on me over time. And of course, I have ties with Canada, and Neil Young is very much Canadian. 

We'll see if Neil goes all-in on separating himself from the media world. I mean, I can relate to hating Joe Rogan. I think Neil has become an "old man yells at cloud" figure over the years. But I think he's sincere in his media skepticism. I will say, music counts as a type of media. And whether it's on Spotify or YouTube or local radio stations or collecting CD's, there's really no bad medium for digging into Neil Young's music.