Fine, so Neil Young might not be a God, but I won't let anyone strip the title 'Demigod' from the man, he has covered more ground and released more respectable works of art than almost any other artist I know: folk to rock to grunge to electronica to...well check here for the details.

Needless to say, I like Neil Young a lot. He's the Johnny Depp of the music industry - consistently odd, and not afraid to drop all of the world's expectations and redefine himself by doing something different. I also understand if people don't like him, the same way that people understand that I think Bruce Springsteen is a talentless hack.

It's all personal opinion, right?

Subjectivity. Right. Check.

So yesterday, Xtina and I are painting the stairway, and listening to Neil Young's Greatest Hits (Which strangely, is a single CD containing 16 songs. This from a man who releases an album per year on average?) And in my head, I am singing along with Neil on 'After The Gold Rush' a song which you either love...

"How can anyone stand this crap?"

...or hate.

"Um, how's that, Buttercup?"

"Neil Young! I mean, he sucks, so why is he so popular?"

Exactly. if you dropped in from another planet and the first thing you heard on the radio was 'After the Gold Rush' you would take off and napalm this blue-green sphere into this Galaxy's Sun#2. So why does Neil Young with his nasal droning grunging broody melodic-ing rate among my top ten artists of all time?

Simple. Because Neil Young is a demigod.

It isn't subjective after all - Neil Young writes objectively insanely fucking cool songs. Songs so good, in fact, that many of them are beyond his own talent to perform! Sure, Yngveyekay Malmsteen might be a more technically proficient guitar player, but he can't write a decent song. Ditto to Soulless Eric Clapton, and double ditto to the man whose initials are B.S. Neil Young has a spirit and creativity that shows through in his music despite the imperfect voice, and the slightly-off-time, slightly-off-key, and just-slightly-off-altogether guitar playing.

I do think that for a Canadian, he is awfully outspoken about American politics...oh well, there has to be a fault somewhere, otherwise, he wouldn't be a *demi*god.

Of course, you are free to disagree...but you would be wrong.

Blog on,
-CZ

Labels: music reviews