Much as I enjoy my massive Spotify Neil Young playlist, it is a little unwieldy at over eight hours long.
So, this week I’ve attempted to tame the beast and create a series of Neil compilations.
I’ve decided that four playlists is the answer, all of 10 songs each to stop things getting out of hand again.
I’ve assembled what I think are the top 10 Neil songs (acoustic), the top 10 electric, the top 10 vaguely commercial ones that will play well in the car without annoying anyone, and a live top 10 based on his many and variable live albums (ie nothing off Earth).
Does anyone want to see what I came up with, or do you want to get on with sharing yours? Honestly, it’s a public service. These concise compilations ate a handy way of enjoying Neil Young all over again.
Spotify?
Let’s see them. I loves a playlist
For the live one, could you not extend it to 16 tracks and just be Live Rust.
That’s pretty much all the live Neil you need.
(cough) Weld
(cough) Unplugged
(cough) Live At The Fillmore East
Massey Hall
Can you put us out of our suspense? If your acoustic set doesn’t include Four Strong Winds it has failed. I know it’s not a Neil song but his version is achingly beautiful.
I’ll have a go, even though it is clearly an impossible task (@SteveT -FSW is lovely, but left out because it’s not a Neil song and this was hard enough as it is)
top ten acoustic (well, top ten slower quieter ones anyway)
Out On The Weekend
Harvest
Winterlong (piano version)
Bandit
Pocahontas
Thrasher
Ambulance Blues
Helpless
Love Is A Rose
Long May You Run
top ten electric
Powderfinger
Down By The River
Over And Over
Cowgirl In The Sand
El Dorado
I’m The Ocean
Cortez The Killer
Love And Only Love
Change Your Mind
Throw Your Hatred Down
Cinnamon Girl?
Down By The River and Cowgirl In The Sand always seem to be the go-to ones on “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” never The Losing End. I’d have The Losing End.
Never been that fussed on it, to be honest…
No Rockin’ In The Free World?
It was almost there….would have been in a top fifteen
Pleased that the acoustic set includes Winterlong and Pocahontas
Surprised that the electric set doesnt include Like a Hurricane and Wrecking ball but guess an awful lot to choose from.
Hurricane is definitely superior to “Hatred” or “Over and Over”, in fact has to be in his top 3 IMHO
Good to see Thrasher in there. Now of my all time NY favourites.
Not much new thus far…. Funny, that.
If the assignment had been a top fifteen, Ramada Inn off Psychedelic Pill would have made it, which is new-ish
Thanks everyone for taking this eccentric endeavour onboard – I knew this was the right place to come. So, Kid Dynamite’s electric list is quite similar to my long list (maybe they choose themselves), but here’s the full set.
Acoustic
The Needle and the Damage Done
For the Turnstiles
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Campaigner
White Line
Human Highway
Thrasher
Little Wing
Too Far Gone
Dreamin’ Man
Electric
Cowgirl in the Sand
Southern Man
Revolution Blues
Fontainebleau
Like a Hurricane
Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)
Rockin’ in the Free World
Love and Only Love
I’m the Ocean
Walk Like a Giant
Commercial
Walk On
Heart of Gold
Come a Time
Midnight on the Bay
Like an Inca
American Dream (CSNY)
Someday
Wrecking Ball
This Note’s For You
Far From Home
Live
Cowgirl in the Sand (Fillmore East, 1970)
Alberquerque (Roxy,, 1972)
Alabama (Tuscaloosa, 1973)
When You Dance (I Can Really Love) (Live Rust, 1978)
The Loner (Live Rust, 1978)
Powderfinger (International Harvesters version) (Austin, 1984)
Tonight’s the Night (Bluenote Cafe, 1988)
Rockin’ in the Free World (Weld, 1991)
Prisoners of Rock’n’Roll (Year of the Horse, 1997)
Cowgirl in the Sand (Road Rock Vol 1, 2000)
Cinnamon Girl?
Not sure why there are the 10 song limitations. I would just do a playlist of about 100 songs and be done with it.
And Cowgirl appears 3 times, maybe that is deliberate?
Sorry didn’t read properly, you don’t want a hundred song list.
Looking at Neil “hits” in Canada, US and UK, this would be (roughly) most commercial top 10:
Cinnamon Girl
Ohio
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Heart of Gold
Old Man
Like a Hurricane
4 Strong Winds
Hey Hey My My
Rockin in the Free World
Harvest Moon
That’s pretty decent.
Yes, it would be churlish to deny that Old Man and Harvest Moon are genuine commercial hits. I just don’t like them to much. What a back catalogue, though. How many other artists could you carve out four different types of compilation for?
indeed. And he is apparently on track for a top 3 album this week with one he didn’t bother to release in the 70s “Homegrown” (based on physical sales).
And Harvest Moon is wonderful, as (of course) is Old Man 😉
Where’s Cortez, Martin?
You have a good point. It’s one of his very best. I guess the problem was it’s too slow for the electric set and up against some stiff competition in the live set.
Not the reggae one, tho’………
Nice to see “Walk Like A Giant” given a mention…there’s a live version on YT which would qualify for the live section if it was released….superb version…I think “Psychedelic Pill ” is one of his later better efforts. Thanks for the lists, great idea…blimey though he has produced a gigantic body of work. Long may he run.
I was hoping for Spotify links 🙁
They’re on their way. Just done a little rejig to the acoustic one as Four Strong Winds is such a great contender. Also Sunny Inside is going to make it on to the commercial list. Of course 10 songs is silly, but so’s an eight-hour playlist. There has to be a happy medium. Maybe I should just put the albums on.
Surprised so little love for Sugar Mountain, for me the pinnacle of his naif I Am a Child type stuff (which was Buffalo Springfield, so can’t count.)
I like Sugar Mountain.
It’s an enjoyable challenge to fill 4 lists of 10 Neil songs. The electric one was easiest – although too many to choose from. The acoustic one I drew mainly from Decade, because that’s the first Neil I heard. The commercial is filling up – mostly with mouth organ tracks. It’s just the live one I’m focusing on now. It would have been mainly from Weld, but I got the Filmore East cd recently, ands there’s a cracking Down By The River on that.
That Filmore East album is fantastic. Brilliant Cowgirl in the sand too.
Hmmm i Had a Spotify playlist of the Afterword Best of Neil which seems to have disappeared. I shall rebuild it!
Here you go… Not all of it but I have work to do
Well, Mr Young’s voice has too often been something that doesn’t work for me but I’m going in . . .
Electric
Like a hurricane
Cortez the killer
Cowgirl in the sand
Down by the river
Dangerbird
Words
Ordinary People
Crime in the city
Cinnamon girl
Powderfinger
Southern man
Acoustic
Four strong winds
Heart of gold
See the sky
Old man
Long may you run
Harvest moon
A man needs a maid (Massey Hall version)
Hey hey, my my
Thrasher
Helpless
Tonight’s the night
Needle and the Damage done?
Neil Young was the first of the classics I discovered. Unplugged being my first ‘New’ album of his. I bought everything going backwards and everything going forwards until Living With War. I reckon I must own 35/36 albums, not including CSNY, Stills/Young and the like. A proper fan I was. But with Living With War it clicked that I hadn’t actually loved or even vaguely liked a new album of his since Sleeps With Angels. So, apart from a brief flirtation with Psychedelic Pill a few years later that was it.
Inspired by this spread I checked Spotify. Staggered to see that there are 25 albums since Living with war – new albums, special editions, archives, live albums. No desire to listen to a single one of them.
Surely it’s Mr Young himself who needs to be more concise? Take a leaf from Bob’s book and keep us waiting 8 years for a v good album that gets acclaimed as a masterpiece…
Well the archive ones are pretty great even if the new ones are not. Why not just make a playlist of the best songs from the last 8 years? Good on Neil for just putting them out even if the quality is nowhere near what it was in the past. At least these days you don’t have to buy an album to hear it.
I know the country years won’t feature highly in anyone’s NY lists, but the International Harvesters really were an excellent band. Skip to 9:19 for one of the best Down By The Rivers you’ll ever hear (and then go back to the beginning for some Powderfinger)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIdICuePM6A
Yeah, I only recently discovered this and the version of Powderfinger is superb. Old Ways and Everybody’s Rockin’ have some good songs but the 80s production doesn’t lend itself to them, and this period makes a lot more sense live. The same can’t really be said of Trans. Has anyone ever seen the live footage from Berlin, where Neil’s twatting about in a sleeveless T-shirt with a vocoder? It’s not Weld, that’s for sure.
Trans was for his autistic son, wasn’t it?
I think so. Model railways came into it, too. Perhaps should have stayed in the vault.
For those of you patiently waiting for the Spotifiy links.
Electric
Acoustic
Commercial
Live
The motherlode
Nei covers
😘
Thanks for this covers list, @martin-horsfield , a few there I hadn’t got. Doing a covers piece on Zuma so will come in handy.
Finally pulled my finger out and come up with my listings.
Live was fun – there were more from Year of The Horse than I would have expected. Weld was not good for many classics – a bit overblown, but Tonight’s The Night, Rockin’ In The Free World and Crime in The City were heartfelt, passionate and ferocious respectively. I didn’t think I would take any from Unplugged (Like A Hurricane is a dirge with the organ), but Pocahontas in particular really stood out in its vulnerability. Only one each from the earlier live albums, but they really bring something vibrant and extraordinary to Neil’s soloing.
Electric was easy – I could have gone for three from Sleeps With Angels – (Trans Am) – it’s my favourite album (discounting Decade).
Commercial are all the ones I could imagine being played on Radio 2 in the seventies – when I was at the barbers with my Dad – cheesy and easy.
Acoustic – Stick a pin in Decade, pretty much – though I like some of his later soppy songs too.
(All listed alphabetically with no ranking)
Acoustic
Campaigner (Decade)
Deep Forbidden Lake (Decade)
Expecting To Fly (Decade)
For The Turnstiles (On The Beach)
Love Is A Rose (Decade)
My Heart (Sleeps With Angels)
Old Man (Harvest)
The Painter (Prairie Wind)
Razor Love (Silver & Gold)
Sugar Mountain (Decade)
Commercial
Harvest (Harvest)
Harvest Moon (Harvest Moon)
Heart of Gold (Harvest)
Helpless (Deja Vu)
Long May You Run (Decade)
Only Love Can Break Your Heart (After The Gold Rush)
Unknown Legend (Harvest Moon)
The Ways of Love (Freedom)
Winterlong (Decade)
You and Me (Harvest Moon)
Electric
Change Your Mind (Sleeps With Angels)
Cortez The Killer (Zuma)
Country Home (Ragged Glory)
Cowgirl In The Sand (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere)
Down By The River (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere)
Driveby (Sleeps With Angels)
Eldorado (Freedom)
I’m The Ocean (Mirror Ball)
Like A Hurricane (Decade)
Southern Man (After The Gold Rush)
Live
Big Time (Year Of The Horse)
Crime In The City (Weld)
Down By The River (Live at the Fillmore East March 6 & 7 1970)
Like A Hurricane (Live Rust)
The Old Laughing Lady (Unplugged)
Pocahontas (Unplugged)
Rockin’ In The Free World (Weld)
Scattered (Year Of The Horse)
Tonight’s The Night (Weld)
When Your Lonely Heart Breaks (Year Of The Horse)
Thanks for the thread, Martin – it’s been good to explore some less familiar tracks, and to realize there are a lot of albums I have never even heard. Over 300 songs in my collection and I’m only scratching the surface…
There needs to be another category “Ditch”
Journey Through the Past
Don’t Be Denied (Time Fades Away)
Revolution Blues
On the Beach
Ambulance Blues (On the Beach)
Tonight’s the Night
World On a String
Mellow My Mind (Tonight’s the Night)
Don’t Cry No Tears
Danger Bird (Zuma)
Love the Ditch songs – On the Beach is my favourite album and Don’t Be Denied by favourite track. But surely Tired Eyes is the ultimate here?
Yes, good call.
Borrowed Tune also. As weary and disillusioned as can be.
Nearly but that one in, but didn’t as er … Neil borrowed the tune.