Neil Young For Dummies

It's interesting that I've seen some refer to Neil Young as "an old hippie" online. Please don't be like those idiots.

To be quite honest, I'm rather undecided on the Neil Young/Spotify fight. I will tell you that Neil Young won that battle and probably for many of the reasons I'm about to give you.

Let's start with this. Between his solo albums and albums he made with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Buffalo Springfield, he's sold over 92 million records. This puts Neil at 54th on the best-selling artists of all time, ahead of Linkin Park, Iron Maiden, Beyonce, Journey, and Black Sabbath to name a few.

Neil Young hosted the Bridge School Benefits for over thirty years with his friends in Metallica, Pearl Jam, Guns n' Roses, and alongside the likes of David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen. The school helped kids with severe physical impairments and communication needs.

Neil Young also started a little charity called "Farm Aid" with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. Farm Aid has raised over sixty million dollars to help family farms. Farm Aid will no doubt outlive Neil Young and continue to help small, family farms.

So this "old hippie" continues to make the world a better place day in and day out while ignoramuses on the internet call him names and question whether he's a communist or not.

Lastly, I mentioned he "won" the battle with Spotify. Yeah, he sure did. He got off a low-fidelity platform he wasn't happy with anyway. His album sales are going up. People who haven't said his name in a decade and people who have never said his name now know about him. It was also just announced that Spotify will now carry disclaimers in front of podcasts that may carry vaccine misinformation.

Once again, even I am somewhat undecided on the Young/Spotify fight, but considering what he's done for music, disabled kids, and farmers he deserves a little more respect than to just be called an "old hippie".