The song Neil Young considers his favourite: “A real song about real feelings”
There have been times in my life, when I’ve watched live televised music performances at major events, be it the Olympics, some sort of public holiday or maybe even Glastonbury re-runs, and somewhere within the crowd of my fellow viewers, the phrase “they haven’t got a good voice” is yelled out, during what is inevitably a reductive take on their performance. In my rebuttal, Neil Young is always my reference point.
See, glossy talent shows and commercialised pop acts have made vocal range the only metric for a lot of people. They seemingly associate talent with an innate ability to flawlessly sing. It’s one of my biggest peeves in modern culture, and as such, I have a scripted response to cut down such nonsense. It’s always something along the lines of voices are meant to be imperfect, for they are the main vessels of character in a song, and perhaps no artist typifies this better than Neil Young. His voice is brutally imperfect, yet I don’t want to hear a single other person attempt to sing a Neil Young song.
It’s a quality that reflects the gruff imperfection of Young as an artist. A man rarely satisfied with anything too pristine and, in turn, someone whose art leans into the shades of grey within everyday life. There’s something deeply paradoxical about his music; angelic and twisted in equal measures, creating songs that give you a warm hug while slowly piercing a knife into your back.
So when it comes to the sort of outright sentimentalism that makes for a great love song, you would think Young would have an innate aversion to it. As the brilliant writer he is, he could undoubtedly pen one, but would it be as enjoyable to him as writing something more socially engaged like ‘Southern Man’ or ‘Ohio’?
Very much so, for Young regarded his 1992 song ‘Harvest Moon’ as one of his all-time favourites, for the simple fact that it evokes something sentimental within him. He said, “That’s one of my favourite songs because it’s a real song about real feelings I kind of remember when I first started writing the melody and everything I was on my boat in the Caribbean.”
He added: “I started writing this melody and then finally the whole thing came to me (and) then I had the words. What really touched me about that song, even more than singing the song, even though it was fun to do it and make the record. Linda Ronstadt came in and put these beautiful vocals on and it blew my mind how well it all turned out.”
The lyric writing and vocal performance are undeniably tender, but it’s the melody that taps into something deeply emotional and romantic. It’s the kind of melody an evil Simon Cowell might have rubbed his hands together for when plotting his annual assault on the Christmas charts. But once again, Young’s performance proves the point: the power of music doesn’t always lie in flawless execution, but in the moving, relatable force of everyday imperfections.
