1521 - Neil Young My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) 1979

"Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. Inspired by proto-New Wave group Devo, the rise of punk and what Young viewed as his own growing irrelevance, the song today crosses generations, inspiring admirers from punk to grunge and significantly revitalizing Young's then waning career. The song is about the alternatives of continuing to produce similar music ("to rust" or – in "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" – "to fade away") or to burn out. A line from the song, "it's better to burn out than to fade away," became infamous after being quoted in Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide note. Young later said that he was so shaken that he dedicated his 1994 album Sleeps with Angels to Cobain. Because of Cobain's suicide, in live concerts he now emphasizes the line "once you're gone you can't come back". Upon its release, "Rust Never Sleeps" was hailed as a commercial and critical revitalization for Young, and the successful, bizarre tour (featuring oversized amps, road crews dressed as Jawas from the new Star Wars film (called Road-eyes), sound technicians in lab coats, audio recordings from Woodstock played from disintegrating tapes, etc.) earned him a new generation of fans and good will, buoyed mainly by "Hey Hey, My My".