Neil Young – On the Beach: #879 of best 1,000 albums ever!

Why is Neil Young’s On the Beach on my best 1,000 albums ever list?

Contemplative and quiet at times, bluesy and rocked up at others, and through and through a great Neil Young album.

What does Neil Young’s On the Beach mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?

It’s really fun to appreciate different eras from Neil Young’s spectacular career.

On the Beach seems to be an album that’s about dealing with and getting through depression, and perhaps it’s even an allegory for mourning the death of the idealized optimism of the 1960s. It’s contemplative at times, bluesy, and occasionally kicks the rock n’ roll up a few notches.

There’s a really cool keyboard effect on “See the Sky About to Rain” that, mixed with Neil Young’s simple yet wonderful vocal performance and stripped-down production, creates an emotional and powerful effect.

“Revolution Blues” reminds me of some of the best songs from Jesus Christ Superstar in a great way: this is rock n’ roll with a little funk edge, disillusioned, bummed out rock that overall represents 1970s rock at its best.

And then “For the Turnstiles” has a very different vibe, old school Delta blues-infused rock with fantastic vocal harmonies.

Pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Neil Young’s On the Beach

It wound up being… interesting timing in writing this Neil Young entry, it being February 2022, especially in keeping in mind that I began doing research for this best 1,000 albums ever project way back in the fall of 2020.

Neil Young has been in the news in just the past week because he pulled his large music catalog out of Spotify in reaction to comedian, UFC analyst, and controversial podcaster Joe Rogan’s spreading of pandemic misinformation on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

It’s a truly a weird intersection of music, pop culture, politics, the pandemic, and the media. I have a great many thoughts and feelings about this situation, and some of them frankly are a bit mixed. While this website, Pop Thruster, and this massive project to catalog my best 1,000 albums ever is a shelter (for me, at least) from the ugly and depressing times we’re currently enduring these days, I feel the need to say this: I completely support Neil Young’s stand, and I find it distressing that many popular media outlets – not just Rogan’s of course, but the vast apparatus of conservative media across radio, blogs, Facebook accounts, FOX News, and many other sources – are actively broadcasting misleading, false, and dangerous information at a time when reverence for science, verified factual information, and trust in non-partisan public institutions is absolutely paramount.

What are my feelings mixed up about, you might ask? Well, mostly about my continued use and reliance on Spotify as a primary means to listen to music and podcasts, for one. And secondly and hugely importantly to me is my usage of Spotify in this best 1,000 albums ever project. Every entry to date has had a “here’s the album on Spotify” section, for instance. You’ll note above that it’s YouTube in this case for On the Beach.

I’m slightly encouraged by the fact that Spotify has taken action to introduce “content advisories” to podcasts discussing covid, and I do recognize that this is a sticky situation that can’t be magic wanded away. For instance, since Spotify signed a $100 million deal with Rogan in 2020 to obtain exclusive rights to The Joe Rogan Experience, I’m presuming they couldn’t simply pull the plug on the distribution of that podcast even if they wanted to – at least not without some kind of nasty and protracted lawsuit during which they might well be forced to keep carrying the show anyway.

In the short term at least, I’m going to continue to leverage Spotify for the best 1,000 albums ever project – with feelings of slight queasiness in doing so – but I’ll keep monitoring this story and may end up changing my mind based on how things develop.