The 1986 album that might be Neil Young’s worst: “A piece of crap”
Since the start of his career, Neil Young has never been afraid to take a chance. He may have a few detours in his catalogue that left fans scratching their heads, but he would have rather kept following his muse than make something he was sure his fans wanted to hear from him.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have hindsight, and when it came to his 1980s output, Young admitted that Landing on Water was far from his greatest achievement.
Although Young was one of the greatest artists of the 1970s, he was never completely comfortable with the MTV generation. Here was a man known for relying on the power of the song, so how was he supposed to adapt to a world where everything came down to fashion and looking good whenever you made a video?
Granted, the 1980s weren’t exactly off to the best start even before MTV kicked in. Whereas albums like Rust Never Sleeps led to Young closing the door on the last decade pretty well, hearing him go into electronic directions on albums like Reactor left many fans baffled by what they were hearing.
Once he did bother to release videos, the songs weren’t exactly there. Say what you want to about how Everybody’s Rockin’ is a perfect way for Young to hit back at his label, but it doesn’t make any of the 1950s rock pastiches any fun to listen to. Since the records weren’t selling, Young did something that no one ever thought he would do: change with the times.
It was an unusual move for an artist who had built his reputation on ignoring commercial expectations. Throughout his career, Young had routinely confounded record executives and audiences alike by following his instincts, making his attempt to embrace contemporary production trends feel oddly out of character.
Compared to the wild genre experiments, Young actually bothered to take the feedback he got and transition to sounds that felt closer to where he was sonically. The only problem was that by actively leaning into the trends, Young ended up looking even worse on Landing on Water, which has some of the worst production on any of his albums and ideas of songs rather than anything fully fleshed out.
Before the album even got its full time in the sun, Young was already done with it, telling Dave Fanning, “It’s a piece of crap. Let’s be honest about it. I don’t know what to say about it, it’s last year’s record. They are all different. There are a couple of songs I really feel good about, but there was a lot of pressure on me during recording…there’s some good things on that record, but if I was going to give one of my records to somebody, I don’t think that would be the one I’d give them”.
Young’s willingness to dismiss one of his own albums is characteristic of his brutally honest relationship with his catalogue. Rather than defending every creative decision, he has often been the first to acknowledge when a project failed to capture the vision he originally had in mind.
That dark streak wouldn’t exactly stop for Young afterwards. Since he had made a promise to make a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young record if David Crosby got clean, his work on American Dream featured the most toothless songs he would ever write, either not being fleshed out enough or being kneecapped by overly chipper production.
Any classic rocker would never live down an album like this, but once Freedom came out, Young suddenly turned into the voice of the people again, almost becoming the elder statesman of rock once grunge kicked in. Landing on Water is still one of the many missteps Young made throughout his career, but if he could survive an album like that, there’s a good chance nothing could have defeated him.
Landing on Water remains one of the more divisive records in Neil Young’s discography, but it also highlights the resilience that has defined his career. Instead of allowing one disappointing release to dictate his legacy, he continued experimenting until he rediscovered his voice. That determination ultimately led to a remarkable late-career resurgence, proving that even his lowest points were merely another stop on a constantly evolving artistic journey.
