Album · Neil Young
Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young
Rust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young, released in 1979. 2 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 47 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Hey, Hey - My, My (Into The Black)”, on 40 lists with a best position of #56.
Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young's tenth album and his third with Crazy Horse, hit the racks on Reprise on June 22, 1979. Young produced it himself, and most of it was cut live on stage and then patched up with studio overdubs, while a few songs were born in the studio outright. The title was the motto of his tour with Crazy Horse: a warning against going soft, and a shove toward bolder, more theatrical shows.
The second side is where the storm breaks, a howling squall of distorted, abrasive guitar that Nirvana and Pearl Jam later named as an inspiration, which is why the record gets called a forerunner of grunge. "Powderfinger", as enigmatic as anything Young has written, became one of his most loved songs, and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" was the hit single, even if it only scraped to No. 79 on the Hot 100. The album itself went to No. 8 on the Billboard 200.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Rust Never Sleeps on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hey, Hey - My, My (Into The Black) | 40 | #56 | – | 1994–2026 | |
| 2 | My My, Hey Hey, Out of The Blue | 7 | #269 | – | 2002–2024 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.