Harvest

Neil Young's 'Harvest' is built upon a country-folk sound shaped by a back injury that restricted him to acoustic performance and the spontaneous assembly of Nashville session musicians dubbed The Stray Gators. This mellow, organic core is dynamically contrasted by two tracks featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and three electric numbers recorded in a barn on Young's ranch. The album's personal and introspective lyrics explore themes of newfound love, the tranquility of rural life, social critique, and the perils of addiction. 'Harvest' became the best-selling album of 1972 in the U.S. and yielded Young's only number-one single, "Heart of Gold," achieving a level of mainstream success that he would consciously retreat from in his subsequent work.