ALBUMParadox (Original Music from the Film)Neil Young & Promise of the Real
ALBUMThe VisitorNeil Young & Promise of the Real
ALBUMHitchhikerNeil Young
ALBUMPeace TrailNeil Young
ALBUMThe Monsanto YearsNeil Young & Promise of the Real
Neil Young's Popular Music Videos
Old Man (Live At Massey Hall 1971)
Neil Young
Ohio (Live At Massey Hall 1971)
Neil Young
A Day In the Life (Live)
Neil Young
Walk With Me
Neil Young
Hitchhiker
Neil Young
Girl From the North Country
Neil Young
Powderfinger
Neil Young
The Making of Le Noise (Bonus Track)
Neil Young
The Needle and the Damage Done (Live at Live Aid, John F. Kennedy Stadium, 07/13/1985)
Neil Young
Big Box
Neil Young & Promise of the Real
Artist Playlists
Neil Young Essentials
One of rock's premier songwriters embarks on a restless musical journey.
Neil Young: The Zane Lowe Interview
Zane sits down with Rick Rubin and Neil Young at the notorious Shangri-La in Malibu.
Neil Young Video Essentials
A mercurial rock 'n' roll legend evolves before your eyes.
Neil Young: Live Acoustic
The guitar legend opens up when he turns down the volume.
Neil Young: Live Electric
Whenever he plugs in, fuzz-caked guitar rock is sure to follow.
Neil Young: The Songwriters
These wildly eclectic covers pay tribute to the man's willful iconoclasm.
Neil Young: Influences
Folk, British rock, and country loom large over his vision.
Neil Young: Deep Cuts
He's a bottomless well of touching folk and bold experiments.
Inspired by Neil Young
Rock's greatest iconoclast has generations of admirers.
Neil Young: Love Songs
Artist Biography
In an effort to understand the long, idiosyncratic career of Neil Young, remember that in 1983, Geffen Records sued him, effectively, for not sounding enough like himself. Even in his early days with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, he was a mercurial presence, injecting the communal optimism of the hippie era with darkness and skepticism (“Ohio,” “Broken Arrow”) and pushing the conventions of folk rock to noisy extremes (1979’s Rust Never Sleeps). To the extent that he represents the spirit of the '60s, it’s in his uncompromising commitment to his own journey, no matter how surprising (1982’s electronic Trans or 1991’s guitar collage Arc). The Geffen lawsuit wasn’t just absurd for its efforts to litigate creativity; it was absurd because almost no artist in popular music has ever been as stubbornly themselves as Neil Young.
Born in Toronto in 1945, he moved to Los Angeles in the mid-'60s, where his music—from introspective solo albums like 1970’s After the Gold Rush or 1975’s Tonight’s the Night to group workouts with Crazy Horse—helped define the sound of post-Beatles rock ’n' roll. If he fits so comfortably into so many musical lineages—country, grunge, folk, noise—it’s only because he’s covered so much ground and with so much unerring conviction; when his biographer Jimmy McDonough asked him if he’d ever want to go into outer space, Young said only if he knew he was going all the way. And if he gets under your skin, he just might be doing something right. As he sang way back in 1966, on Buffalo Springfield’s “Mr. Soul,” “I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her.” And he’s been following that muse ever since.