Americana (Neil Young & Crazy Horse album)

American Songwriter quoted Young as saying this about the tone and intent of the album:

Every one of these songs [on Americana] has verses that have been ignored. And those are the key verses, those are the things that make these songs live. They're a little heavy for kindergarteners to be singing. The originals are much darker, there's more protest in them — the other verses in "This Land Is Your Land" are very timely, or in "Clementine," the verses are so dark. Almost every one has to do with people getting killed, with life-or-death struggles. You don't hear much about that; they've been made into something much more light. So I moved them away from that gentler interpretation. With new melodies and arrangements, we could use the folk process to invoke the original meanings for this generation."[3]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[4]
Robert Christgau	A[5]
Entertainment Weekly	A–[6]
The Guardian	[7]
NME	5/10[8]
The Observer	[9]
Pitchfork	6.1/10[10]
Rolling Stone	[11]
Slant Magazine	[12]
Spin	7/10[13]

Americana received strongly polarized reviews from music critics. It holds an average score of 68 out of 100 at Metacritic, based on 31 reviews.[14] Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune gave the album three-and-a-half out of four stars, writing that "Americana reveals the hard truth inside songs that have been taken for granted."[15] Dan Forte, in Vintage Guitar, said "this may be his best since Rust [Never Sleeps]."[16] Johnny Dee in his review for the magazine Classic Rock remarks how "Young has picked every song apart, reworked melody and lyrics and made them his own", making them better for it.[17]

In a mixed review, Michael Hann of The Guardian found the album "impossibly pointless" and felt that some songs exhibit "sloppiness" and "unnecessary lengths".[7] NME reviewer considers the album "largely comprised of sub-standard covers of folk songs."[8]

Robert Christgau named Americana the best album of 2012 in his year-end list for The Barnes & Noble Review,[18] and cited it as one of his top 25 albums of the 2010s decade.[19]

• Neil Young – vocals, guitar

Crazy Horse

• Billy Talbot – bass, vocals
• Ralph Molina – drums, vocals
• Frank "Poncho" Sampedro – guitar, vocals

Additional personnel

• Dan Greco – orchestral cymbals, tambourine
• Americana Choir – vocals
• Pegi Young – vocals on "This Land is Your Land"
• Stephen Stills – vocals on "This Land is Your Land"

• Americana at AnyDecentMusic?