Recommendations of the Editorial team
Neil Young has been writing songs for over 50 years. But even with almost 50 albums, there are a lot of tracks that have been forgotten over the years. Some are from albums that never came out, others were only played live a few times before disappearing completely. Here are 20 of our favorite lesser-known songs that are either unreleased or underrated.
“Kansas”
Neil Young wrote songs at such a breathless pace in the mid-1970s that he couldn’t possibly release them all, even though he averaged one album a year. This gentle love ballad was recorded during the Homegrown sessions. An LP that he discarded in favor of Tonight’s the Night. An album that itself had been sitting on the shelf for over a year.
Many of the Homegrown songs appeared on later albums. But “Kansas” remained in the archives and only appeared again on Young’s solo acoustic tour in 1999. The studio recording was released in 2020, when Homegrown was finally released.
“Pushed It Over the End”
Neil Young shocked fans at the Bottom Line in New York on May 16, 1974, when he played an hour-long surprise set consisting almost entirely of unreleased songs. It remains one of his greatest bootlegs and deserves an official release one day.
The concert opened with a song he announced as “Citizen Kane Jr. Blues,” but which was later renamed “Pushed It Over the End” when it resurfaced on the CSNY stadium tour in the summer of that year.
It’s a gentle, dreamy song. Supposedly inspired by Patty Hearst, which would have been a career highlight for most songwriters. For Neil, it was just something he played a few times for a year and then ditched for good.
“Out of Control”
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1999 reunion album, Looking Forward, is an infinitely forgettable work and essentially just an excuse for a lucrative reunion tour.
But the LP gave us “Out of Control.” The song was a regular highlight on Young’s acoustic tour earlier this year, and the CSNY version didn’t do much for him. Listen to the reduced version to see what it could have sounded like.
“Stringman”
People who aren’t deep into Neil Young’s history were a little confused when he called his 2007 album Chrome Dreams II – for the simple reason that he’d never released anything called Chrome Dreams.
However, the hardcore fans knew that this was the title of a 1977 shelved album that was shelved in favor of American Stars ‘n Bars. One of the LP’s highlights was the haunting piano ballad “Stringman,” which he played a few times on a 1976 tour with Crazy Horse and again on his 1993 MTV Unplugged taping. It’s a fan favorite, even though he’s only pulled it out twice in the past 21 years.
“I’m the Ocean”
Recorded within days of each other, Neil Young and Pearl Jam’s 1995 collaborative album Mirrorball is a hit-or-miss effort, but the power of the seven-minute “I’m the Ocean” is undeniable. It’s a psychedelic, sprawling jam that was a highlight of Young and Pearl Jam’s all-too-brief European tour that summer. The three members of Crazy Horse weren’t happy when he ditched them for Pearl Jam in 1995 – and they probably didn’t appreciate having to play “I’m the Ocean” in 1997 – but they still did a great job.