Did Neil Young ever have a number one?
There aren’t many artists who can claim to have done more for music and culture than Neil Young. He’s the ‘Godfather of Grunge’, a pioneer of alternative music, a guitar hero, and a master poet who is just as adept at deafening bursts of raw power as he is at melancholic self-reflection. Whether it be ‘Cinnamon Girl’ or ‘Ambulance Blues’, his sonic and emotional reach is far more extensive than most world-famous artists.
Not only is the Canadian maestro a cultural legend, but again, separating him from others of his stature, the quality of his work has mostly retained a very high level. It’s a remarkable feat given that he has released nearly 50 solo albums, a rare number for any artist, not to mention one handling all the compositional responsibilities themselves.
While writing even a tiny portion of Young’s solo efforts would be enough for most artists to die happy, safe in the knowledge they’ve penned music of legendary status just once, this only accounts for just one strand of his career. Before releasing his 1969 second effort and his first with longtime backing band Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere– the body of work that laid the foundations for alt-rock – he’d already helped soundtrack the counterculture with Buffalo Springfield.
That’s not all, either. In July of 1969, Young became a full-time member of Crosby, Stills and Nash, linking up with his old Buffalo Springfield bandmate, Stephen Stills, and making the finest supergroup of all time even more exquisite as CSNY. In March 1970, they released their debut as a quartet, Déjà Vu, the ultimate hippie album, which bottled the spirit of a consequential era that was on its way out.
Following that moment, Young returned to his solo career and released his third album, After the Gold Rush, in September. This was a creatively fruitful period, and in 1972, he released the best-selling album of the year and what has long been deemed his signature effort in Harvest.
Producing hits in ‘Heart of Gold’ and ‘Old Man’ made him a household name. The rest of the 1970s saw him bolster his critical and commercial status with an array of legendary albums and music that became increasingly depressing due to the death of friends, romantic travails, and other issues impacting the songwriter.
So, did Neil Young ever have a number one?
Given that it’s hailed as his magnum opus and triumphantly climbed to number one on the Billboard 200 album chart, it’s no surprise that Young’s sole number-one hit was from Harvest. You might have guessed it, but his catchiest, most accessible number in ‘Heart of Gold’ is his only number one hit to date.
Interestingly, despite being an incredible band featuring four of the finest musical minds of all time, no CSNY song managed to hit number one in America or Britain. Young is the only member of the band to have achieved a number one song, with ‘Heart of Gold’. While David Crosby also experienced the sensation of topping the charts twice with The Byrds’ covers of Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and Pete Seeger’s ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’, neither was an original, so they don’t count.
