Studio Album · No. 20
Harvest Moon Songwriting Credits by Neil Young
Produced by Neil Young, Ben Keith · Engineered by Tim Mulligan, John Nowland
Holds writing credit on 10 of 10 tracks
Authorship Breakdown 10 / 10 documented
Scored across the 10 tracks with documented writers, by whether Neil Young carries a lyricist or composer credit.
Share of the 10 tracks where a band member is credited, by role.
By the Numbers
Awards & Recognition 1
Every song on Harvest Moon is a Neil Young original, written by him alone, and the album was built as a deliberate acoustic return to the gentle country-folk of his 1972 album Harvest. Young reunited the Stray Gators, the same core players from that earlier record, including pedal-steel and dobro player Ben Keith, who co-produced the album with him. The title track became one of Young's most enduring later hits and remains a signature of his softer catalog. The closing "Natural Beauty" stretches past ten minutes and was recorded live in concert, giving the otherwise studio-bound record a quiet open-air finish.
Harvest Moon is the nineteenth studio album by Neil Young, released in November 1992 on Reprise Records and produced by Young and Ben Keith, an explicit companion to the 1972 Harvest album, recorded with many of the same musicians (Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor returning for backing vocals, Spooner Oldham, Ben Keith) and deploying the same acoustic, country-folk framework to revisit the themes of middle age that Harvest had addressed from early adulthood. Young wrote all original material; the title track, a gentle, slow-dance waltz about enduring love, was the lead single and reached the top twenty on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Young's most commercially significant single in years; 'From Hank to Hendrix' and 'Unknown Legend' addressed the experience of long-term partnership with the same autobiographical directness. The album debuted at number 16 on the Billboard 200 and reached number three in Canada, Young's home country, becoming his highest-charting album in a decade; it was certified platinum in the United States and received warmer critical reception than most of his 1980s work. Harvest Moon is generally regarded as Young's most successful artistic and commercial return, a genuine reunion with the acoustic country-folk idiom rather than a nostalgic exercise, and it demonstrated that the emotional intelligence and melodic invention of Harvest had not diminished in the intervening two decades. The album's commercial success, the best-charting Young album in over a decade, demonstrated that the audience he had built through his most celebrated work of the 1970s had remained loyal through the deliberately uncommercial experiments of the 1980s, and that the acoustic country-folk idiom remained his most commercially accessible mode whenever he chose to inhabit it.
Track Listing & Credits 10 tracks
| # | Title | Lyricist(s) | Composer(s) | Producer(s) | Performers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Unknown Legend
#38
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar) |
| 2 |
From Hank to Hendrix
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar) |
| 3 |
You and Me
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar, Piano) |
| 4 |
Harvest Moon
#5
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar) |
| 5 |
War of Man
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar) |
| 6 |
One of These Days
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar) |
| 7 |
Such a Woman
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar, Piano) |
| 8 |
Old King
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar) |
| 9 |
Dreamin' Man
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar) |
| 10 |
Natural Beauty
|
Neil Young | Neil Young | Neil YoungBen Keith | Neil Young (Lead Vocals, Guitar, Piano) |