80 Artists Pick Their Favorite Neil Young Song (From Stereogum. Neil Young will be 80 tomorrow, 11/12/25)

[highplainsdem]

And btw, Sterogum is being hurt, very badly, by Google's AI Overview. See this thread on their announcement yesterday: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220793547

The great Neil Young turns 80 tomorrow.

To celebrate, we asked 80 artists including Jeff Tweedy, Dave Matthews, Brittany Howard, Michael Stipe, Open Mike Eagle, Jewel, Tom Morello, Kurt Vile, Allison Russell, Matt Berninger, Perfume Genius, A-Trak, and many more about their favorite Neil song:

— Stereogum (@stereogum.com) 2025-11-11T14:39:13.808Z

https://stereogum.com/2476602/80-artists-pick-their-favorite-neil-young-song/lists

When I was a kid first getting into classic rock, Neil Young was “the weird one.” The Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, they all had their legions of fans. Young, did, too. But they were the loners, the wanderers. My elders would quip about his voice, or the darkness simmering underneath his writing. For every beautiful, enduring folk-rock hit, he had a whole array of gnarled music unafraid to lean into some harrowing adult shit — not foreign amongst his peers, but rarely conveyed with so much unflinching honesty. Out of all the Boomer icons, Young was the dark horse.

You get to know Young for yourself, and you find someone with incredible range and incredible consistency. Few artists were as bulletproof-great as Young was for as long he was; fewer still could claim the ongoing cycles of relevance he has shown, with multiple rebirths and resurgences. Beyond setting a standard for his contemporaries, he went on to become the Godfather Of Grunge, and then a hallowed icon for whole swathes of indie music across generations. And through it all, he was always Neil. Whether ragged and brooding at a pump organ, spinning golden melodies around winsome harmonica peals, kicking up cacophony with Crazy Horse, or singing through a vocoder, there were so many iterations of Neil Young — and yet, you always knew it was unmistakably him.

It’s not just the songs, but the multiplicity of Young that looms large for artists generations removed: yes, a master songwriter, but also a one-of-a-kind guitar hero massively influential on so many different facets of rock music. An activist and maverick, setting not only an example for musical nuts and bolts, but how to carry oneself as an artist. I’ve spent the last three months talking to artists about Neil Young, and this was the most common refrain — that Young never bent to the will of others, always followed his muse no matter how erratically it darted, and showed how to navigate the music industry and use one’s platform with dignity.

Young turns 80 this Wednesday, Nov. 12. To mark the occasion, as we did for Bob Dylan’s 80th in 2021 and Paul McCartney’s 80th in 2022, we asked 80 artists to pick their favorite Neil Young song. Below, you’ll find one artist for every year Neil’s been on this Earth, all speaking on the vast inspiration he still provides so many decades on. Happy Birthday, Neil!

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