Ranking the Neil Young Albums from His First Decade
May 12, 2026 by Daniel de Visé
Few artists garner more attention on AllMusic than Neil Young. Trust me: I've seen the numbers.
Back in the '80s, when I was searching out used vinyl of On the Beach and Time Fades Away in Chicago record stores, those records felt like guilty pleasures. Neil Young wasn't widely regarded as a top-drawer artist, like Springsteen or Dylan, although the triple-LP Decade in 1977 made a pretty strong case.
That's all changed now. Fans and pundits have come to regard Young as the standard-bearer for real, garage-band rock and roll, passing the tradition from the Troggs and The Standells and Seeds in the '60s to Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam and Wilco in the '90s and beyond, carrying the torch through the eras of yacht rock, arena rock, prog rock, synth rock, hair metal and disco. All hail the Godfather of Grunge.
Young has been churning out solo albums for nearly 60 years. Some of the later ones are really good. And that poses a problem: Every time Young puts out a Ragged Glory or Harvest Moon, he pushes the old stuff a little further into the past. Time fades away.
As good as those albums are – I also love Mirror Ball – I don't think they hold a candle to most of Young's recordings from roughly the first Decade. In that spirit, let's go back and revisit the early albums: The first 10 solo studio LPs, from Neil Young through Rust Never Sleeps, and the essential live set Time Fades Away.
Here's my attempt at a ranking.
