Freedom (Neil Young Album)

Freedom (Neil Young album)

Freedom is the eighteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 1989.

Freedom effectively relaunched Neil Young's career, after a largely unsuccessful decade. After many arguments (and a lawsuit), Young left Geffen Records and returned to his original label, Reprise, in 1988 with This Note's for You. Freedom, however, brought about a new, critical and commercially successful album in the mold of his 1979 classic album, Rust Never Sleeps. Freedom contains one song, "Rockin' in the Free World", bookending the album in acoustic and electric variants, a stylistic choice previously featured on Tonight's the Night and Rust Never Sleeps. "Rockin' in the Free World", despite lyrics critical of the then-new George H. W. Bush administration ("we got a thousand points of light"; "kinder, gentler machine gun hand"), became the de facto anthem of the collapse of communism (specifically the Fall of the Berlin Wall which occurred a month into the album's release) because of its repeated chorus of 'Keep on Rockin' in the Free World'.

An edited cut of the electric version of "Rockin' in The Free World" was also used over the final credits of Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, and the song was rereleased as a single at the time of the film's release.

Stylistically the album was one of Young's most diverse records, ranging from acoustic love songs to raging rockers. Three of the songs on Freedom ("Don't Cry," "Eldorado" and "On Broadway") had previously been released on the Japan and Australia-only EP Eldorado, and in a way represented Young's prediction of the grunge movement, featuring heavy waves of thundering distortion and feedback (often strangely juxtaposed with quieter sections). Two songs featured a brass section, an unusual stylistic departure for Young, but one he had embraced fully on his previous album This Note's For You.

This album was published in US as an LP record and a CD in 1989.