21. Trans (1982)

Young imports a style from the other end of the musical spectrum for Trans, his most notorious album. Each song is coated in a thick gloss of computerized synthpop and even his voice is unrecognizable, hidden behind a vocoder. Young seems to make a preemptive defense of Trans by rerecording his Buffalo Springfield classic "Mr. Soul" in its style. It fits right in, showing that new songs, like "Transformer Man" and "We R in Control," also have strong melodies at their hearts. Still, Trans now sounds ridiculously dated, especially for an album meant to represent the future of music.

Listen: "We R in Control"

20. Greendale (2003)

Greendale is a rock opera about a California family that includes a bandit, an eco-warrior, and a world-weary old man, all at odds with Patriot Act-era America. Cut with Crazy Horse's sledgehammer backing, it sounds, without careful listening, like any other album of Young in hard-rock mode, but with the addition peculiar lyrics about TV news vans and the FBI shooting a cat. Still, the stage is set for some righteous anti-authority rock, particularly in the finale, "Be the Rain."

Listen: "Be the Rain"

 

19. Americana (2012)

Young finally records an album of traditional folk songs, but instead of doing it in the expected acoustic style, he invites along Crazy Horse. The result is some fire put into these campfire songs. On "Oh! Susanna," it sounds like he's come from Alabama with a banjo on his knee in order to do something sinister.

Listen: "Oh! Susanna"

 

18. Living With War (2006)

Full of fist-pumping guitar riffs and bullhorn-ready choruses, Living With War is an entire album decrying the Bush agenda. It therefore sounds somewhat dated and rushed, but in 2006, someone really needed to write a song called "Let's Impeach the President" and Young delivered with a searing rock-and-roll editorial.

Listen: "Let's Impeach the President"

 

17. Psychedelic Pill (2012)

The latest album from Young and Crazy Horse sounds a lot like the first, with a grainy sonic texture and marathon guitar workouts. But now they're free from the storage capacity of physical formats; hence, a twenty-seven-minute song and two sixteen-minute ones. The lyrics are reflective: "Walk Like a Giant" muses on the fizzling of '60s ideals, while "Twisted Road" is a bit of nostalgia for the early days of the Dead and Dylan. While the sound and the message are right, Psychedelic Pill insists on ninety minutes of your time when it could have gotten the job done in sixty.

Listen: "Walk Like a Giant"

 

16. American Stars 'N Bars (1977)

American Stars 'N Bars is a hodgepodge of leftover tracks from three very good years of Young's career. Highlights includes the acoustic gem "Star of Bethlehem" and one of his most staggering hard-rock numbers, "Like a Hurricane," which has a solo that wails like a category-five storm. If he'd lived, Hendrix would have covered this song.

Listen: "Like a Hurricane"

 

15. This Note's for You (1988)

Young's experimental streak finally pays off on This Note's for You. Adding a brass section, he tips his toe into jazz rock, a style that suits him surprisingly well. "Coupe de Ville" and "Twilight" are the only songs on which Young has ever sounded cool in the calm, assured, Nat King Cole sense of the word. The title track is a scathing but fun takedown of the Cola War-era trend of rock and pop stars endorsing brands.

Listen: "This Note's for You"

 

14. Chrome Dreams II (2007)

Chrome Dreams is the title of an unreleased album from the late '70s Young drew from for years afterwards. Chrome Dreams II is the opposite; here, he rerecords a cluster of cast-offs from albums dating back twenty-five years. Given it had been decades since Young turned to the archives, there is much strong material here, especially "The Believer," a gospel-tinged love song, and "Ordinary People," an epic tribute to the flawed proletariat that stays spirited across its eighteen minutes.

Listen: "Ordinary People"

 

13. Comes a Time (1978)

Comes a Time is so filled with references to nature, seasons, vast distances, and hard-won love it sounds like a Willa Cather novel set to acoustic rock. The closing cover of Ian and Sylvia's "Four Strong Winds" fits thematically. Throughout, Young is sincere without being sappy, and he eases into a warm, inviting sound, thanks in part to some vocal assistance from Nicolette Larson.

Listen: "Four Strong Winds"

 

12. Le Noise (2010)

"Walk with me!" Young screams on the first song of Le Noise, but he doesn't have pleasant places to go. Producer Daniel Lanois, a master of atmosphere, coaxes Young's scariest album out of him. The songs are mercilessly pessimistic, particularly "Love and War" and "Angry World," and Lanois recorded most of them with just Young on electric guitar, backed by a sonic inferno of feedback, echoes, and reverb. This is the evil doppelganger of the minimalist folk-rock sound of Comes a Time and Harvest.

Listen: "Angry World"

 

11. Ragged Glory (1990)

In the early '90s, an entire generation of musicians embraced Young's template, treating angry hard rock and confessional singer/songwriter musings as two sides of the same jagged coin. (Also like Young, they all thought it was cool to dress like potato farmers.) Ragged Glory is a fierce, biting, distortion-heavy album that aligns the modern-day Young and Crazy Horse with their alt-rock offspring. A bunch of well-off forty-somethings do shockingly well at keeping pace with the kids fresh from the garage — so well that Pearl Jam slipped "Fuckin' Up" into its own set lists.

Listen: "Fuckin' Up"