From to , the singer released a handful of albums with moderate success, each scoring roughly 1. It must be said that several of them, most notably On the Beach , were deleted by the singer for decades. It has been a great catalog seller since returning to shelves in The trio CSN managed to secure a larger general public impact with their album shifting over 6 million copies. The former is in the vain of Harvest with melodic folk rock songs. The latter is an hybrid record, live songs reworked on studio, with one half of acoustic songs and a second half with 4 distorted electric guitar playing.
These 4 songs are monuments of the rock history as they paved the way to the entire grunge movement. These Geffen years have been terrible commercially speaking as the artist wanted to express his artistic liberty, while they wanted him to keep being successful. The synthetizers and vocoders infused Trans shocked many, including Geffen.
Up to date, the album is his earliest with sales lower than 1 million. Neil Young then proposed them a country album instead, Old Ways , that they refused. It was ultimately released a pair of years later to little success. When Geffen said they wanted a rock album, he fulfilled the demand in a caricatural way. Young countersued them because his contract granted him they would be no interference in his artistic decisions.
He won. He completed his contract with them with the releases of Landing on Water and Life , concluding his Geffen years with no million seller. He then returned to Reprise. It sold below a million as its predecessors.
This was the kiff-off of more great years for the artist. His next 5 albums sold at least 1. Geffen likely hated to see it. In the other side, the trio-quartet started to flop when entering the 90s. After the good seller Mirror Ball , an album backed by Pearl Jam as musicians, Neil Young never moved a million pure units anymore with a studio release.
At 50 and with more than 3 decades in, it was fairly expected. His sales remained consistant ever since though. Up to , he sold ,, units per release, which are great numbers so deep into his career, showing his fanbase remains strong. Obviously, with more and more people giving up the whole idea of buying records, sales from albums since are lower. They shift close or over , units each. These recent releases include albums recorded way back in the 70s, these are Hitchhiker and Homegrown.
None of their subsequent singles made similar waves. They released half a dozen of moderate hits selling in 6 digits. As a solo artist, Neil Young made the Hot 55 for the first time with the , units seller Cinnamon Girl. This came over a year after the album release.
Woodstock peaked at 11 in the US while selling over a million in the world. Teach Your Children was another top 20, also coming close to a million with all versions combined. This song was barely released and still climbing charts when Ohio was dropped. It sold over a million, selling the best in the US where it peaked at They sold around half a million each.
It closed counts at over 2 million. Also from Harvest , the other classic song Old Man sold nearly half a million on its original form. The largest solo hits for the rest of his decade never moved more than ,ish units anymore.
From this point on, Young would prize simplicity and spontaneity. Whether it warrants that length is another question, although Ramada Inn, which clocks in at a mere 16 minutes, is terrific. Swiftly recorded and released, backed by a voice choir, the anti-Iraq war tirade Living With War finds Young sounding energised by the urgency of his undertaking and, one suspects, by the furore he must have known it would cause.
The songs veer from fantastic the title track; Words to forgettable, while the arrangements are slick but sometimes overblown, as on A Man Needs a Maid.
Lanois added the occasional disorientating tape loop while Young accompanies himself on distorted electric guitar, which he is clearly playing at ear-splitting volume. Bringing this freshness of approach to a solo singer-songwriter album resulted in some strong material.
Harvest Moon is better than the classic album its title referenced, and whose backing musicians it reassembled. The sound fits the songs, which are wistful and streaked with nostalgia. It;s also the album that we have played more that any other Neil Young record in our collection. And if we are going to choose what we believe is the number one Neil Young album, than we are going to go with the one that we have wanted to listen to the most.
We think that is in essence the best rubric to utilize in choosing a number one album from an artist that has released forty one studio albums throughout his career. Hey Hey, what can I say? Skip Anderson has written for various musical journals and historical periodicals. Skip spends his times writing and cooking a mean barbecue on his ranch in Southern Georgia.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Best Albums. Top 10 Neil Young Albums. Prev Article Next Article. Related Posts. Where is On the Beach then? Anonymous June 17, No Zuma and no On the Beach?
Top 10 Cody Jinks Songs. Top 10 Juan Gabriel Songs. Top 10 Minnie Riperton Songs. Sleeps With Angels. Mirror Ball. Dead Man. Vapor Records. Broken Arrow. Year of the Horse. Road Rock, Vol. Are You Passionate? Prairie Wind. Living with War.
Chrome Dreams II. Toast [Not Released]. Fork in the Road. Le Noise. Psychedelic Pill.
0コメント