Neil Young

What’s sad is that before today I had never listened to a single Neil Young song. Well, actually, it might not have been the worst thing to miss out on. Neil Young seems to be one of those artists that you either absolutely love or absolutely hate. He reminds me a lot of Bob Dylan in the fact that he is capable of writing songs better than anyone of his time but can’t seem to hit a note that resonates with me! When I ask around about people’s opinions about Neil Young I get very mixed reviews. One person says that they “LOVE” Neil Young while another simply groans in disgust.

Personally, I’m kind of on the fence with Neil Young as an artist. After listening to his album “After the Gold Rush” released in 1970, I think I have gotten a pretty good sense as to what his music is all about. There are certain aspects of his music that are very polished but his solo lead vocals act as a road block for me. I simply cannot get over the shrillness or whiny sound that he emits through his music. It’s somewhat disappointing to me to be honest. Young’s music is somewhat like a Thanksgiving Dinner gone awry. No matter how good the surrounding dishes are (I’m thinking stuffing, gravy, potatoes, cranberries… yum!), if the turkey is bad, the dinner won’t live up to expectation.

Similarly, Neil Young expertly creates songs. Throughout all of his songs, he is able to make the background music tell his story along with the lyrical poem that he creates. The constant presence of “down-to-earth” instruments such as the acoustic guitar and the piano enable his songs to have a much more clean and simplistic sound. This starkly contrasts other heavier sounding rock at the time such as Sabbath! The instrumentals that back up this famous singer are polished and do not overpower the songs; simply serve them.

Additionally, I am amazed at Neil Young’s ability to compose literature. No, no, not a play or a novel! He is so talented at songwriting that I consider it literature! While this may seem rather hyperbolic, I think he deserves this recognition. This is another reason why I believe he resembles (and was probably influenced by) Bob Dylan. While his vocals are not exactly up to par, he compensates by telling a story through his music. The instrumentals themselves could support the music that he creates, but the fact that on top of that he makes music that make a listener enter deeper thought is truly astounding. Usually I don’t rave this much about lyrics but when I read the below stanza of “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” I knew this man had some writing talent:

Old man lying
by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by,
Blue moon sinking
from the weight of the load
And the buildings scrape the sky,
Cold wind ripping
down the alley at dawn
And the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying
by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes.

If you heard a slight rumble in the background, that was the sound of my mind being blown by the depth of those lyrics!

Now let’s get to the grudges. I’m just going to address the problems head-on. Neil Young should have seriously considered giving up singing. But then again what do I know? I’m just a guy behind a computer screen while he attained an amazingly successful career in music! Despite this, his voice sounds horrid in a majority of his songs. Whenever he tried singing in a higher octave, he resembled the sound I would imagine Elmo’s voice to be if he were on drugs. At times in the album, I cringed because I couldn’t stand the way that his lead vocals completely wrecked the great countermelodies! The way that his weak voice works the songs, I felt like I was in a Mr. Rodgers episode or on Sesame Street.

I noticed that the two songs that I mostly enjoyed were the two that he sung at a lower octave and didn’t do much vocal fluctuations. This enabled his areas of strength to shine through in my opinion. The two best songs on the album for me were “Southern Man” and “Oh Lonesome Me”. When there are harmonies in the songs, they nullify the horrid sound of Young’s voice and enable the cooler electric guitar strums, piano, and beats take over. While “Oh Lonesome Me” has a much more mellow tone and I think it prevented Neil Young from vocally wrecking it. I don’t like when he tries too hard to hit the high notes. The electric guitar strums in the background spice up an otherwise soft sound driven by a slow hi hat and long drawn out harmonica. Both of these songs are pretty funky and generally good, though. Whether you love him or hate him, it cannot be ignored that Neil Young was a very strong artist of his time.