ICYMI: 5 Albums Neil Young Released During Spotify Boycott

Neil Young recently ended a two-year boycott of Spotify and once again allowed his music to be streamed on the platform.

“I have returned to Spotify, in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it,” Young said in a statement. “I hope all you millions of Spotify users enjoy my songs! They will now all be there for you except for the full sound we created. Hopefully Spotify will turn to Hi Res as the answer and serve all the music to everyone.”

The end of the boycott, which started in protest to Spotify formerly holding exclusive rights to host Joe Rogan’s controversy-stirring podcast, gave listeners access to Young’s classic albums like After The Gold Rush, Harvest, Comes A Time, Harvest Moon, and many others. Young’s work with Crazy Horse and other bands like The Stray Gators and The Santa Monica Flyers was also restored to the streaming provider.

Along with those well-known entries in Young’s career-spanning catalog, Spotify now hosts several albums that were released during Young’s absence from the streamer. Between January 2022 – when Young pulled his music from Spotify – and his recent decision to end his boycott, Young issued an array of records.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s lost album, Toast, was finally be released in July 2022. The album was originally recorded in 2000 and 2001 at Toast studio in San Francisco. Toast was shelved and 2002’s Are You Passionate? became Young’s next release. Different recordings of four of the songs on Toast appeared on Are You Passionate?, which was recorded with Booker T. & The M.G.’s and Crazy Horse. The other three songs on Toast were completely unreleased.

In November 2022, Neil Young & Crazy Horse released World Record. Co-produced by Young and Rick Rubin, the 10-song LP was recorded at Rubin’s Shangri-La facility in Malibu. The album, which served as the follow-up to 2021’s Barn, featured Young on guitar alongside Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, guitarist Nils Lofgren and bassist Billy Talbot. The four musicians tracked the album live “in order to wrangle the Horse’s long-running spirit of spontaneous, collaborative, and electrifying performance.” Rubin then guided the process in which World Record was mixed to analog tape at Shangri-La.

“The music on this album of course is very special to me,” Young wrote in a message on his Neil Young Archives website. “Now, with this recording, something special is happening and we know we have a good one. It’s too early to say anymore because in this world things come and go so fast. But real magic lasts and we think we have it. We know we have something special. Music lives. It’s the same band, Crazy Horse, but the music is unlike Barn.”

A live album featuring Young with Promise Of The Real was released in August 2022. Noise & Flowers documented the legendary singer-songwriter and his frequent backing band since 2015, which is made up of Lukas Nelson, Micah Nelson, Anthony Logerfo, Corey Mccormick and Tato Melgar — on their 2019 European tour.

Noise & Flowers boasted early Young classics like “Mr. Soul,” “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” and “Helpless,” and live rarities including “Field of Opportunity” and “On The Beach,” as well as later favorites “Rockin’ In The Free World” and “Fuckin’ Up.” The nine-date European run came just two weeks after Young’s friend and manager of 50 years, Elliot Roberts, died at the age of 76. Young performed with a photo of Roberts taped to his road case for the entire tour and Noise & Flowers was dedicated to Roberts.

“Playing in his memory [made it] one of the most special tours ever,” Young wrote in the album’s liner notes. “We hit the road and took his great spirit with us into every song. This music belongs to no one. It’s in the air. Every note was played for music’s great friend, Elliot.”

In August 2023, Young released a studio album entitled Chrome Dreams. Originally planned for release in 1977 and thought by some Youngologists that it would have been his most powerful record of the ‘70s, Chrome Dreams was another album that sat on the shelf for decades after it was recorded. The “final version of an album that includes some of rock’s most unforgettable songs,” Chrome Dreams consisted of studio recordings captured between 1974 and 1977.

Each song on the record maintained a special place in Young’s history, including such classics as “Powderfinger,” “Like A Hurricane,” “Homegrown” and “Pocahontas.” “Powderfinger” is the early/first solo version, while “Pocahontas” is the take from Rust Never Sleeps sans overdubs. Additionally, both “Sedan Delivery” and “Hold Back The Tears” contained lyrics not found in later released versions.

At the end of 2023, Young issued his 45th album, Before And After, which was produced by Lou Adler and Young and mixed by The Volume Dealers — Young and Niko Bolas. A mostly solo, continuous 48-minute sonic tapestry, Before And After was comprised of more obscure songs from Young’s extensive catalog, stretching back to his Buffalo Springfield days with three gems from the band’s limited but impressive output: “Burned,” “On The Way Home” and “Mr. Soul.”

Additionally, several songs on Before and After were performed by Young on his 2023 solo acoustic Coastal Tour including “Homefires,” “If You Got Love,” “When I Hold You In My Arms” and the album opener “I’m The Ocean,” the latter originally appearing on Young’s 1995 collaborative album with Pearl Jam, Mirror Ball.

“The feeling is captured, not in pieces, but as a whole piece – designed to be listened to that way,” Young said of Before And After. “This music presentation defies shuffling, digital organization, separation. Only for listening. That says it all.”

The five full length albums released by Young, as well as four standalone tracks issued during his Spotify boycott, can be streamed via the playlist below:

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