“Powderfinger” by Neil Young

Neil Young first put "Powderfinger" out on Rust Never Sleeps in 1979, and he placed it like an ambush: it kicks off the loud, electric second side right after the hushed acoustic one, and the jolt is the point. David Briggs produced and mixed it, Richard Kaplan engineered, and the guitars come on grinding and ragged, the way only Young can make ragged sound noble.

The story is told by a dead man. A young fellow watches a gunboat bearing down on his family's home, finds that every older man who ought to be making the decisions is gone, dithers, finally acts, and pays for it with his life. It's a frontier ballad played at full volume. Rolling Stone later put it at 450 on its list of the 500 greatest songs, and a 2014 special issue went further, naming it the best thing Young ever wrote. An Australian band even took their name from it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.