3 albums from his career Neil Young thinks are underrated

Neil Young is one of the most prolific songwriters of all time and, as of 2026, has released 45 studio albums as a solo artist. Besides recording with Crosby, Stills & Nash and Buffalo Springfield, he has also appeared on albums by The Monkees, Joni Mitchell, Warren Zevon, Tracy Chapman, Randy Bachman, Pearl Jam, and R.E.M. throughout his career.

To his fans, many of those 45 albums remain underrated. Young himself once mentioned three albums that he believed deserved a wider audience and should have been heard by more people.

3 albums from his career Neil Young thinks are underrated

“Trans” (1983)

The first album is “Trans”, released in 1983, which Neil feels is not underrated. He believes that if other people didn’t like it, the problem might have been with the mixing. “Underrated! Well, let’s say I don’t underrate Trans. I really like it, and think if anything is wrong, then it’s down to the mixing. We had a lot of technical problems on that record, but the content of the record is great.”

“(…) We didn’t spend as much time recording Re-ac-tor as we should’ve. The life of both that record and the one after it – Trans – were sucked up by the regime we’d committed ourselves to. See, we were involved in this programme with my young son Ben for 18 months which consumed between 15 and 18 hours of every day we had.”

“It was just all-encompassing and it had a direct effect on the music of Re-ac-tor and Trans. You see, my son is severely handicapped, and at that time was simply trying to find a way to talk, to communicate with other people. That’s what Trans is all about. And that’s why, on that record, you know I’m saying something but you can’t understand what it is. Well, that’s the exact same feeling I was getting from my son,” Neil Young told Mojo magazine in 1995.

That album was quite ahead of its time, combining Neil’s style with Electronic Music, New Wave, and Synth-pop influences. Besides reimagining Buffalo Springfield’s “Mr. Soul”, The Rolling Stones‘ influence could also be heard on “Computer Age”. The guitar riffs in both songs are quite similar to the one from “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.

“Everybody’s Rockin'” (1983)

The second album mentioned by Neil was “Everybody’s Rockin'”, also released in 1983, this time recorded with his backing band, The Shocking Pinks. “Well that was as good as Tonight’s The Night as far as I’m concerned. The character was strong, the story was great but unfortunately, the story never got to appear on the album. Before I got a chance to finish it – I got stopped from recording.”

“Geffen cancelled a couple of sessions where I was going to do two songs – ‘Get Gone’ and ‘Don’t Take Your Love Away From Me’ – that would’ve given a lot more depth to The Shocking Pinks. But if you didn’t see the shows you wouldn’t be able to get into it fully. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near as intense as Tonight’s The Night. There was very little depth to the material obviously. They were all ‘surface’ songs. But see, there was a time when music was like that, when all pop stars were like that. (Ardently) And it was good music, really good music. See, when I made albums like Everybody’s Rockin’ and everyone takes the shit out of ’em…l knew they could do that. What am l? Stupid?”

Neil Young continued:

“Did people really think I put that out thinking it was the greatest fuckin’ thing I’d ever recorded? Obviously I’m aware it’s not. Plus it was a way of further destroying what I’d already set up. Without doing that, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now. If I build something up, I have to systematically tear it right down before people decide, ‘Oh that’s how we can define him,'” Neil Young told Mojo.

Recorded with The Shocking Pinks, one of the backing bands Neil Young used during his career, the album was focused on Rockabilly. At just 25 minutes long, it remains Neil’s shortest album to this day. The commercial failure of “Trans” and “Everybody’s Rockin'” led Geffen Records to sue the musician for $3.3 million. They argued that the two records were not commercial enough and were “musically uncharacteristic of his previous recordings.” Young responded by filing a $21 million countersuit, alleging breach of contract because he had been promised complete creative freedom by the label. The dispute ultimately resulted in label founder David Geffen personally apologizing to Neil for the lawsuit and for interfering with his work.

“Tonight’s The Night” (1975)

The third record is “Tonight’s the Night”, which, alongside “Everybody’s Rockin'”, Neil once described as one of his two best albums. He made that remark in an interview with  Kurt Loder in the early 1990s. “Everybody’s Rockin’ and ‘Tonight’s The Night’ are two of my favorites. They’re very similar as far as I’m concerned, except one is extremely light and the other is extremely heavy. There’s not really a difference, they’re two different characters. One guy is a drugged out kind of semi-alcoholic rocker, gone awry at his friend’s wake.”

“This other one is like this Rock and Roll guy who’s just kind of like a country bumpkin Rock and Roll guy who’s made it big but it’s the wrong time. I don’t know how I justify all these ridiculous things, these characters and everything. But for a long time for me it was an escape, to just jump into a character. Be that character for as long as I could ride and then just jump off,” Neil Young said.

When the album was released in 1975, Young described it as being about dope, life and death. Besides the title-track of the record, he also said he particularly liked songs like “Tired Eyes” and “New Mama”. The title track continues to be part of Neil Young’s live shows, having been performed 164 times, most recently in 2023.