Top five Neil Young songs #5

5) Long may you Run

-my final choice for the top five neil young songs is long may you run. a song neil wrote about his car. Neil has always been a car guy, collecting classics, and building more economy friendly cars that run on water and everything in between, but the first car neil ever had was a black hearse that he named mort. when neil was first trying to make it as a musician he decided that he would have better success in america than in candida, so he packed up his car and drove across america just trying to catch a break. then while sitting at a red light in L.A. a musician named stephen stills saw the car and knew that it was neils because it was such a unique and one of a kind car. stills got neil to pull over and convinced him to join his band buffalo springfield. the rest is history.

-but i personally like this song for a few reasons. first of all my first car was not exactly in the best condition, it ran okay but tended to break down easily and frequently, so as sort of a good luck symbol this was the first song i played while driving my car by myself in hopes that this car would run for as long as i needed it to.

-i also love the harmonica in this song, i love any song with harmonica but especially this one, because every once in awhile when my cousin would put on his neil young "concerts" in my basement he would let me and my sister be part of his band, and it was always my job to play the harmonica. so whenever i listen to this song i remember those concerts and how excited i would get when there was a harmonica part for me to play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nszR0tfp4Es&feature=PlayList&p=5576407F5D03F279&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=36

Top five Neil Young songs #4

4) My My Hey Hey (out of the blue) & Hey Hey My My (into the black)

-i had to group these two songs together for a few reasons. first because both titles are basically the same, just in reverse order i have never been able to distinguish between them without listening to them (once you hear the first notes its obvious though) but just by looking at the titles it still confuses me which one is which.

-also even the radio messes up these two titles from time to time, so i know im not the only one who has trouble telling the difference.

-but both of these songs are so amazingly well done, they work great together even though they are so opposite from each other, the soft acoustic sounds of my my hey hey compared to the electric guitar in hey hey my my which prove why neil is known as "the godfather of grunge" but somehow when these two different sounds come together in these songs it totally works, showing just how diverse neil can be, switching seamlessly from one genre to another like it was the most natural thing ever. which is something i have always loved about him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYV6PAckr5w (hey hey my my)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrsWUY9HA-Y (my my hey hey)

Top five Neil Young songs #3

3) After the Gold Rush

-My third favorite song is after the gold rush, the first thing i like about it is that it has such an unusual and unique title. Which he came up with by the way based off a screenplay of the same name, although the screenplay was never made into a movie.

-Anyway the reason i like this song so much is because the background music works so beautifully with the lyrics of this song. I love the piano solo that opens the song with just a few notes neil paints an amazing picture of the beauty and pain that this song expresses. Then when neil starts singing in a voice that should be too high for him, but somehow works for this song it just helps complete the picture that the music was painting before.

-looking back now, i wish that during at least one of the "concerts" that my cousin put on in our basement on a weekly basis had this song on it, there is so much emotion in this song and its impossible to sing this song without using as much emotion as possible so to see my cousin try to have as much emotion with it as neil has would have been great. (not that these concerts were not great anyway)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLbSSWZcVVY&feature=related

Top five Neil Young songs #2

2) Helpless

-my number two song was picked for purely personal reasons, not that i couldnt go on and on about the technical merits of this song, but thats not really what i like about it.

-when i was younger my cousin made me a tape of what he considered the best neil young songs, along with a few others by different artists. but anyway i listened to that tape at least ten times a day every day when i was young and whenever helpless came on me and one of my best friends at the time corey, would just sit there and laugh through the entire song. we thought that the line "big birds flying across the sky" was simply hilarious and even still when i hear that song today i always laugh and think of her.

-another personal reason i have for liking this song came when i was older. in high school i used to drive my friends sean and nick to school ever morning, and every morning i would subject them to that same neil young tape i had when i was little. generally they were pretty good sports about it, and for some reason when this song played sean would sing along with it. unfortunately sean cant really sing along with tapes that well, but i didnt want him to feel bad so i would sing along with him too, and for some reason when we both were singing together he could harmonize a lot better and we actually sounded halfway decent together. i still try and get him to sing this song with me when we are together, but he usually wont.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmeeXTkU3Cc&feature=related

Top five Neil Young songs #1

I get asked all the time what my favorite Neil Young song is, and I never have an answer for them, because it changes almost every day. Neil's music is so diverse that no matter what kind of meed youre in, you can always find something to listen to. But ive finally narrowed it down to my top five favorite Neil Young songs (at least for today)

In no particular order;

1) Rockin' in the Free World
-It's really cliche to pick this one, but at the same time no list would ever be complete without this song. People look at the title and assume that its a patriotic song, and then use it in the wrong way. But if you listen to the lyrics it is really obvious just what Neil is talking about, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with patriotism.

-The way that neil sing this song, you just know how strongly he believes in what hes singing about, hes not not just singing for the sake of making noise.

-But I guess the real reason i personally like this song is because when Neil was on tour for his Greendale album i had the opportunity to go see him live, and i was very disappointed in the show, it was very poorly advertised, i dont think anyone in the audience was expecting the rock opera/environmental rally that they got that night. but after the concert during one of the encores neil played this song and it completely made up for the disappointing concert earlier. Nothing compares to hearing that song live. And when i had the chance to see neil again with C,S,N and he once again performed this song during an encore it was just as amazing as hearing it live the first time, Neil rocks this song every single time he plays it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3pQZ5Y6pzU

U2: No Line On The Horizon

Rolling Stone has this to say about U2's new album No Line on the Horizon "their best since 1991's Achtung Baby."

Time Magazine, conversely, calls it an "unsatisfied and unsatisfying, new album. Their worst since 1997's Pop."

In my own, very much amateur, opinion it falls somewhere in between the two.

The eleventh studio album for the Irish super group was released on February 27th 2009 and despite much hype and pre-release buzz the album has not done nearly as well as expected. That isn't slowing the band down any though, their world tour is in full swing and the band is also, reportedly, working on yet another new album.

For over thirty years now U2 have been together recording political and popular music. The first big success for the band came when, in 1983, they had their first number one album in the UK, War. World wide recognition came soon after.

No Line on the Horizon is a collection of eleven songs, plus a bonus version of the title track, No Line on the Horizon. Which is probably one of the best songs on the entire album. When I first heard it I actually didn't think that it was U2, it sounds nothing like any song I have heard by them before, in all the best ways. There was nothing stereotypical or cliche. And from the opening notes the song hooks you, and you get sucked into the music, and before you know it, it's over.

The second song on the album "Magnificent" is another one of my favorites. The opening music has a very dark and mysterious sound to it, and with lyrics like "only love can leave such a mark/only love can leave such a scar" how can you not like this song.

Not all the songs on this album are that good however, the only way I can describe the song Breath is just blah. Nothing original. Nothing that stands out. Nothing that makes me want to listen to this song again.

So whether you thing that Rolling Stone got it right, or Time Magazine called it this time, U2's newest album No Line on the Horizon is worth checking out, if only so you can decide for yourself how good it is.