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".

1177 - Neil Young Down by the River 1969

"Down by the River" is a song composed by Neil Young. It was first released on his 1969 album with Crazy Horse, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere". Young explained the context of story when introducing it in New Orleans on September 27, 1984. It depicts a man who catches his woman cheating on him, then meets her down by the river and shoots her. A few hours later the sheriff comes to his house and arrests him. In the liner notes of his 1977 anthology album "Decade", Young states that he wrote "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" while delirious in bed in Topanga Canyon with a 103 °F (39 °C) fever".

607 - Neil Young Rockin' In The Free World 1989

"Freedom" relaunched Neil Young's career, after a mostly unsuccessful decade. The album is opened with "Rockin' in the Free World".
According to Neil Young's biography Shakey, while on tour in the late '80s, Young and Frank "Poncho" Sampedro looked at photos in a newspaper of the Ayatollah Khomeini's body being carried to his grave. These images showed mourners burning American flags in the street, which incited fear in Poncho. Sampedro commented, "Whatever we do, we shouldn't go near the Mideast. It's probably better we just keep on rockin' in the free world". Young asked if Sampedro was using that for the basis of a song and when Sampedro said no, Young said that he would instead.
The lyrics criticize George H.W. Bush and make specific references to his administration and the social problems of late Twentieth Century America.