Neil Young has now loudly pulled all his solo albums off of Spotify. He’s protesting the streamer’s loyalty to podcaster Joe Rogan, a right wing lunatic who dispenses false information about COVID and vaccines.
Gone from Spotify are Young’s beloved bestsellers such as “After the Goldrush” and “Harvest,” not to mention “Comes a Time,” and “Rust Never Sleeps” plus a couple dozen others.
But Neil Young is still available on Spotify because the prolific rocker has a lot of other music out there. His records with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills Nash & Young all remain, as well a plethora of guest star performances on other albums.
The result is that “Southern Man” is removed, but the live version with CSNY is still available. You can still stream “Mr. Soul” and “Expecting to Fly” from the Springfield, and so on. Besides the CSNY album “Deja Vu,” which people of a certain age know by heart, there’s a group album from 1999 called “Looking Forward” that I’ve totally forgotten but has some pretty good Young songs and vocals.
Spotify is like the Hotel California: you can check in but you can never check out!