The legendary 1970 song Neil Young has always regretted: “Big bummer”
Widely considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Neil Young has enjoyed decades of success as a musician, inspiring generations of artists with his socially conscious and personal lyrics.
Despite his work within the folk and country genres, Young’s music has influenced a wide range of artists, from Sonic Youth to Tom Petty, in what is the clearest testament to his work’s enduring and malleable nature.
Part of Young’s enduring appeal comes from how adaptable his songwriting is across genres. Whether filtered through folk, grunge or heartland rock, his songs retain an emotional directness that resonates with vastly different generations of musicians.
After dropping out of high school to pursue a musical career, Young played in several bands before working in folk clubs, writing some of his earliest songs in this period. During the 1960s, he joined Buffalo Springfield, who released their debut album in 1966 to moderate success. However, just two years later, the band broke up, and Young signed with Reprise Records, releasing his eponymous debut record at the end of 1968.
Since then, Young has become known for his beautiful compositions and thoughtful lyricism, both as a solo artist and as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The musician has released a prolific amount of records since the 1960s, releasing his 42nd studio album in 2022, World Record, Fuckin Up in 2024 and Coastal: the Soundtrack in 2025.
With so many songs under his belt, it would be understandable for the singer-songwriter to regret some of his musical choices. Yet, when interviewer Zach Sang asked Young whether he regretted any of his albums, he replied: “No, not really. No, some of them aren’t very good, some of them are pretty good, but it doesn’t matter. They passed, they were there.”
Referring to the phenomenon of current musicians putting lots of effort into a single song release, Young replied, “That’s a bunch of bullshit. It really is. I don’t like that. I don’t like that part of it,” preferring to continuously keep creating and not hyper fixating on one piece of work. However, on the Howard Stern Show, Young revealed that there is one song that he wishes he could’ve done differently. Referring to the song ‘Woodstock’ by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, he said, “You should’ve heard Stills’ original vocal. It was amazing.”
He continued: “We were just hung up on making everything perfect, so we all thought that we had to do it again, but we didn’t. I mean, his overdub vocal is great. I mean, that’s the one everybody hears and it’s a great vocal. But the original vocal was funky like the guitar is funky.” Moreover, Young explained, “We finished the record, and I didn’t realise until later on, but when I heard the original vocal again… we screwed up. We were trying to be good. We tried. Big bummer. Never should have done that.”
For Young, the story became an example of how excessive refinement can strip music of its personality. The pursuit of technical perfection sometimes risks erasing the very qualities that made a performance compelling in the first place.
Young shared some musical words of wisdom: “You shouldn’t try. I think you should just let it be. Then you got the essence of what it is. If you’re trying to do something you think you should be doing, you’ve lost it already.”
That philosophy has shaped virtually every era of Young’s career, from his stripped-back acoustic records to his noisy electric experiments. More than consistency or precision, he has always valued instinct and emotional truth above all else.
