‘Ordinary People’: the Neil Young lyric that still resonates decades down the line
A quick flick back through the history books of Neil Young‘s career will make the process of navigating a career as an artist with uncompromising truth relatively easy.
The reality is anything but, however. The sharp claws of the bureaucratic entertainment business are forever waiting to snatch at authenticity and rob artists of their true expression. But Young, despite it all, kept his defences up.
Never did he let his pen waver into the realms of lyrical safety, and instead, used it to cut through the most pertinent problems in society. Whether it was something closer to home, like ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’ or the systemic on ‘Southern Man’, Young has never shied away from the discomfort of music.
So as history has rolled on, and discomfort has become the pertinent feeling in most of the societal movements of the past 50 years, Young’s music has matured with profundity – lyrics written in the turbulent 1970s feel as on the nose in 2026 as they ever have been.
Young’s 18-minute epic ‘Ordinary People’ was recorded in that decade and not released until the early 2000s, perhaps because of the sense of knowing within Young that this anthem would continue to contextualise society with every passing year and so.
Throughout this lengthy track, which Young kept exclusive to his live shows in the 1980s, he gives voice to the common folk, who are living life under the boot, grappling with everyday issues such as drugs, crime, and simply making enough to pay their taxes.
Throughout the verses, Young fluctuates between specific tales of social struggle, from a man ripping his neighbours by selling stolen goods at an inflated price, or the local factory which has recently shut down, stripping people of their jobs and becoming a shelter for the growing community of homeless people.
It’s a raw and unfiltered take on wealth inequality, and the lives that are squeezed out of the edges of late-stage capitalism, turning every facet of modern society into a rat race. A feeling best summarised by the song’s standout lyric: “Well, they try like hell to build a quality end, they’re workin’ hard without a doubt / They’re ordinary people / And the dollar’s what it’s all about, hard workin’ people.”
For 30 long years, this song sat in the safety of Young’s creative vault and was only made public to those lucky enough to be at his live shows. A large part of that would have been because those crowd members would have had an acute understanding of the themes Young was talking about, and could have taken his message out the door with them, and used it to shape their day-to-day decisions.
But perhaps the world just wasn’t ready for it yet. With his finger on the pulse, Young would have realised that the ever-shifting tides of culture would likely bring injustice back around once again and ‘Ordinary People’ would be on hand to once again bring a voice to the silenced. Like he said, “Some songs like ‘Ordinary People’, need to wait for the right time.”
