10. Zuma (1975)

Young never wrote anything more transfixing than "Cortez the Killer," a song-poem that proved a rock song about genocide could be as affecting as book or movie about genocide. Listening to Young's vivid description of the Aztec culture on the eve of its downfall over a guitar riff that moves like steady ocean waves is, to me, as moving as reading Maus or watching Hotel Rwanda. The rest of Zuma goes back to rock-and-roll basics; "Don't Cry No Tears" is a reworking of a song he wrote for his high-school band.

Listen: "Cortez the Killer"

 

9. Silver & Gold (2000)

Young had been hoarding songs for years to make Silver & Gold, not wanting his most touching new material to go to a Crazy Horse jam session or risky foray into a new style. It paid off. Silver & Gold is a gorgeous album that moves at a grandfather's gentle pace. Songs like "Good to See You," "Daddy Went Walkin'," and the tribute to old friends "Buffalo Springfield Again," are impossibly heartfelt and warm. Young also shows that, no matter how many eardrums he rattles with Crazy Horse or new stylistic hats he tries on, his best friend is and always will be a well-tuned acoustic guitar.

Listen: "Good to See You"

 

8. On the Beach (1974)

On the Beach was written after the heroin-related deaths of guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, and during Young's divorce. Listening to its eight pained, rambling songs is like watching your grizzled uncle get shit-faced and cry into his beer, and, honestly, who wouldn't be transfixed by that? Young shows an uncanny ability to bend music to his emotions, no matter how thorny and stuck in his gut they are. Diving into the depths of despair gave him courage to write "Revolution Blues," an truly frightening song about his one-time acquaintance Charles Manson.

Listen: "Revolution Blues"

 

7. Harvest Moon (1992)

Harvest Moon features the same folky sound as Harvest, and many of the same musicians. But Young doesn't ignore the two decades between them. Harvest was an album of twenty-something restlessness; Harvest Moon speaks to middle age, with songs about marital tenderness ("Me and You," the title track) and pre-divorce anxiety ("From Hank to Hendrix"). The most sublime song, "Unknown Legend," describes a working mom's moments of reprieve on a motorcycle with all the fragility and beauty Young thinks they deserve. Given that the Stones were still getting together every few years to rewrite "Start Me Up," his embrace of midlife themes was not just earnest but brave.

Listen: "Unknown Legend"

 

6. Freedom (1989)

"Rockin' in the Free World" was a fucking torpedo aimed at America's post-Cold War sense of self-satisfaction. Just as urgent as "Ohio" was in 1970, it was a protest song for a society where there was too little upheaval, where the masses were shufflin' their feet and sleepin' in their shoes as the inner cities rotted and people oceans away painted them as devils. Plenty else is damn good on Freedom. "Wrecking Ball" and "Hangin' on a Limb" are two of Young's best soft ballads, and "Don't Cry" is a breakup song of scary intensity. On his version of "On Broadway," Young makes it seem like he'll take Manhattan by carpet-bombing it with noise.

Listen: "Rockin' in the Free World"

 

5. Tonight's the Night (1975)

Tonight's the Night was begat by the same tragedies that fueled On the Beach, and has a similar demo-tape feel. But whereas On the Beach's tracks were long-winded and subdued, the twelve songs on Tonight's the Night are brief and bludgeoning. They speak of helplessness ("Tired Eyes," "Borrowed Tune") and of yearning for a new beginning, or at least a new distraction ("Mellow My Mind," "Albuquerque"). The two-part title track, which directly eulogizes the late Bruce Berry, is the best and least inwardly focused cut. Throughout, Young and Nils Lofgren unload blazing guitar riffs, creating haunting blues rock with an emphasis on blues.

Listen: "Tonight's the Night, Part 1"

 

4. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)

Young teamed up with Crazy Horse for the first time on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and found one of his callings: hard-rock maestro with an aching heart. "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" begat the modus operandi of much of his best work: go deep into despair and work it out by manhandling a guitar. Meanwhile, "Cinnamon Girl" is a blast of garage rock that echoes the joy of Young finally jamming with a band that gets him. It took just this album to show that Young would go down in history as more than the guy who played those two chords on "For What It's Worth."

Listen: "Cowgirl in the Sand"

 

3. Harvest (1972)

The goal of a lot of mainstream music made by white people in the early '70s was molding a mixture of folk and country into radio-friendly pop. No one had more success with this formula than Young did on Harvest, the best-selling album of 1972. He put a few chords, a harmonica, and some lovesickness into "Heart of Gold," and had the world eating out of his hand. But it's not just the sound he got right; a sense of disquiet and premarital loneliness echoes through Harvest, especially on "Out on the Weekend," "Old Man," and "A Man Needs a Maid," in which the booming sound of the London Symphonic Orchestra drives home the subtext that it's not really domestic help the singer needs. Taken as a whole, it's as harrowing a portrait of a quarter-life crisis as Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run.

Listen: "Heart of Gold"

 

2. After the Gold Rush (1970)

Young's teenage band The Squiers became a mostly instrumental outfit after a recording engineer told him his voice was "weird." Icy, nasally, and sorta Canadian-sounding, that voice was not going to deliver the next "Glad All Over." But his particular wail was perfectly cast as a ghost come down to curse America's slave-owning past on "Southern Man." It also did wonders on "Don't Let It Bring You Down," a song with the ethereal presence of a midnight gust of wind, and After the Gold Rush's title track, a surreal ballad of environmental anxiety. With the stark tone of a breakup letter throughout, this album more than any other shows Young as a bold, idiosyncratic singer/songwriter.

Listen: "Southern Man"

 

1. Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

Bargaining with a finicky muse, Young took an odd route to complete the half-acoustic-half-electric Rust Never Sleeps. He played brand new songs live, recorded the performances, and then built up the tracks through overdubs, never losing the zeal of a great live album. "Thrasher" and "Powderfinger" are fascinatingly cryptic. (Not knowing who is on board makes that white boat coming up the river all the more threatening.) Some songs sound like folk tunes for an era when collective culture comes in scattered mass-media bits: the Alamo and a man from Mars go hand in hand on "Ride My Llama," as do the Powhatan princess and Marlon Brando on "Pocahontas." Like a good novelist, Young adapts symbols for his own ends. The oft-quoted "Hey Hey, My, My (Into the Black)" is basically the kind of rock-and-roll anthem Chuck Berry used to sing rewritten for a multi-generational genre. Whether it's better to burn out or fade away would be debated for years, but on this album, showcasing the best of his electric and acoustic personalities, Young proved he wouldn't be doing either.

Listen: "Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black)"

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