Who sings the female backing vocals on Neil Young song ‘Harvest Moon’?
No one from the Woodstock generation had sailed into the 1990s with such creative cylinders firing and an authentic ear to music’s ground as Neil Young.
Frank Zappa was still going strong, and Leonard Cohen had eased into his midlife synth sage with ease, but among the true orbiting names associated with the West Coast’s mythic flower counterculture, it was Young that hurtled ahead through the following years’ rapidly shifting terrain with a fierce artistic antenna pulling toward the next artistic venture.
Raising his profile with the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young supergroup, songwriting pedigree was quickly tested to the mettle across the early 1970s, all members boasting admirable LP efforts, but none touching Young’s essential twofer of After the Gold Rush and Harvest two years on from the quartet’s Déjà Vu debut. Artfully scoring his breezy folk rock brew with his earthy but introspective lyricism, Young cemented himself swiftly in the upper echelons of the singer-songwriter boom, Harvest topping the world’s album charts with its lush orchestral pieces and country ballads.
He could have been set, cracking a formula that would have seen Young sail the acoustic folk wave for the rest of his days. Yet, Young was nagged by a fickle creativity. Always eager to confound expectations, Young’s career would soldier through his sombre ‘Ditch Trilogy’, before soaking up punk’s seethe on 1979’s Rust Never Sleeps attack. Toying with the corporate world in the 1980s, Young stuck two fingers up to his Geffen label by jumping from vocoder synthpop to 1950s rockabilly pastiche to wind the record bigwigs up, peaking to apex cantankerousness on 1988’s This Note’s for You and the title-track’s satirical video of the MTV age.
It didn’t always work, but Young’s zig-zagging across his creative fancies yielded an album trail across the 1980s that bristled and popped with belligerent intrigue. Yet, Young would enter the 1990s with a renewed essentiality just as he had ten years before amid punk’s bulldoze. Immersed in the burgeoning alternative rock set to explode on the charts, Young found himself namechecked by the likes of Pixies, Sonic Youth, and Pearl Jam, and accordingly downtuned his guitars and toured with the likes of Social Distortion to honour his sincere deepdive into the so-called grunge wave.
Following Ragged Glory’s raucous garage stomp, Young defied expectations once again and looked back to his Harvest LP 20 years earlier to fuel a spiritual sequel of sorts, taking a step back from excursions into midlife angst and taking stock of life’s loves and relationships. Released in 1992, Harvest Moon’s title track single would be celebrated by longtime fans fatigued by his punk dallying, the number lauded as Young’s last canonical song.
So, who’s singing backing vocals?
Confirmed on his official website, Young made clear that the dreamy single was dedicated to his former partner. “’Harvest Moon’ is a song I wrote for Pegi, my wife of many years, who gave me two beautiful children and helped bring up my first child, Zeke,” he revealed in 2021. “She was a dancer and floated around when she was happy”.
Underneath its country stroll, stirring female vocals elevate ‘Harvest Moon’ to its celestial heights of gentle whimsy and romantic dance. Having lent her siren voice to Harvest’s ‘Old Man’ and ‘Heart of Gold’, Linda Ronstadt returned to imbue Young’s plaintive appreciation of his old flame with her immaculately enchanting voice, affording the number its most memorable sparkle alongside the chiming melody and percolating, nocturnal steel guitar washes.
