Harvest

Harvest is the fourth studio album by Neil Young, released in February 1972 on Reprise Records and produced by Young, Elliot Mazer, Jack Nitzsche, and Todd Storz, Young's best-selling album and one of the best-selling albums of 1972, though Young himself would later describe the commercial success as an artistic trap that he deliberately escaped through the deliberately uncommercial work that followed. Young wrote all original material; the album features the London Symphony Orchestra (on 'A Man Needs a Maid' and 'There's a World'), James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt providing backing vocals, and a core ensemble that recorded partly at Broken Arrow Ranch in California and partly in Nashville. 'Heart of Gold' reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, Young's only number-one single, and its lyrical meditation on searching as an end in itself rather than a means to a destination became one of the most widely quoted song lyrics of the era. Harvest spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, has been certified six-times platinum in the United States, and is consistently ranked among the greatest albums ever made in critical polls. Young later described the album's success as having put him 'in the middle of the road,' and the subsequent records, Time Fades Away (1973), On the Beach (1974), and Tonight's the Night (1975), are deliberately harrowing documents of loss and substance use that represent Young's rejection of the 'Heart of Gold' mainstream success.