Rust Never Sleeps

Rust Never Sleeps is the eleventh studio album by Neil Young, released in June 1979 on Reprise Records and produced by Young (as Shakey), a double album split between a solo acoustic side and a full Crazy Horse electric rock side, and the album that reconnected Young's critical and commercial standing after a period in the late 1970s when both had diminished. Young wrote all original material; 'My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)', the acoustic opening track and its electric mirror 'Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)', frame the album with the central image of the double-edged relationship between rock's vitality and obsolescence, the line 'it's better to burn out than to fade away' becoming one of the most quoted in rock criticism and later cited by Kurt Cobain in his suicide note. 'Thrasher' and 'Powderfinger' (electric) are generally cited as among Young's greatest compositions; the album was recorded partly from the Rust Never Sleeps tour film, with the acoustic side reproduced in the studio. Rust Never Sleeps reached number 8 on the Billboard 200 and has been certified double platinum in the United States; it won the Rolling Stone Album of the Year award for 1979 and is consistently cited in critic polls as the most important album of Young's post-Harvest career and one of the defining albums of the late 1970s. The album's title, taken from a Devo slogan about the necessity of constant change, became one of the most resonant titles in Young's career and was the organizing principle of his subsequent musical restlessness.