![\"Neil](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Neil-Young-2015-Musician-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Wed 1 October 2025 17:00, UK <\/p>\n
The era that Neil Young<\/a> was brought up in almost feels like a bygone era for pop music.\u00a0<\/p>\n Young never wanted to serve any corporate suit whenever he played his music, and while he did have a lot of great tunes to make on his own, there\u2019s a good chance that some of his career moves would have got him dropped from his label in no time today. But Young would rather die by his own sword than have to cater to whatever corporate schlock had come up to replace his brand of music.<\/p>\n Because when looking at the pop industry today, the late 1960s felt like a musical utopia in many respects. Not everyone had to have the greatest tunes of all time in their arsenal, but it was still about the concept of sharing music before the more money-hungry members of the music industry started to turn their noses up at mavericks that didn\u2019t play by the rules. And it\u2019s not like Young couldn\u2019t already see this coming, either.<\/p>\n Throughout the 1980s, there was already the Everybody\u2019s Rockin\u2019 debacle for him to deal with after David Geffen demanded a rock record out of him. But when MTV started catering to bands that were about fashion more than musicianship, \u2018This Note\u2019s For You\u2019 might as well have been a personal middle finger from Young. He knew that everything had become a commercial in many respects, but even when grunge brought a silver lining to everything, no one was expecting pop music to swing all the way back in the other direction.<\/p>\n I mean, look at the music in 1993 compared to the music in 1999, for example. The biggest names in music in the former year were people like Nirvana and Pearl Jam<\/a> breaking down barriers for new artists to thrive, and yet in 1999, people had to deal with the massive influx of boy bands slowly taking over the world or the pop-punk phenomenon that was starting to take shape.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that those eras weren\u2019t classics in their own way, but when the pop starlets started coming out again, Young didn\u2019t have much time for Britney Spears on the charts. The tunes sounded great, but \u2018Uncle Neil\u2019 already had a bit of a bias considering Spears\u2019s history of being a Disney kid before becoming one of the biggest stars in the world.<\/p>\n