Neil Young Songs - This Note's For You Lyrics

Neil Young - This Note's For You

Neil Young - This Note's For You Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: This Note's For You
Released: 1988

This Note's For You Lyrics

This Note's For You Song Chart

This song is Neil Young's critique of artists who "sell out" and allow their songs to be used in commercials. It mentions Coke, Pepsi, Miller, and Bud.

Artists like Young and Bruce Springsteen have never let their songs be used in commercials, feeling it cheapens their artistic integrity. Many other artists, like The Who and The Rolling Stones, have made lots of money by letting companies use their songs. Some classic rock artists like John Mellencamp resisted for years, but allowed their songs to be used for commercial purposes when they realized it was the best way to get them exposure. A band with a particularly interesting take on the subject is Devo , who feel it is part of their art.

MTV originally refused to run the video because it mentioned products by name. This created some controversy, prompting MTV to put it in rotation. It won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Video of the Year in 1989.

Young discussed his reasons for accepting the award despite it being originally banned in an interview with Village Voice Rock and Roll Quarterly: "I dunno - must be the Perry Como in me. I could do the hard-line Marlon Brando thing, not accept the award, give it to the Indians. But that's almost the predictable thing to do. You can't get money to make videos if MTV won't play them. In accepting the award I thought I'd be able to make more videos and get 'em played."

MTV at the time was about as permissive as the cable landscape got - at least in terms of bawdy behavior. That's why it was surprising anytime they deemed something not suitable for air. In 1992, Paul McCartney recorded a concert for MTV for their Up Close series, but the network edited out his song "Big Boys Bickering," which was about politics and the environment. MTV claimed that the song was excised because of curse words in the lyrics, although it would have been easy enough to bleep them.

This is the title track to the only album Young recorded with The Bluenotes as his backup band.

This was released as a single with the A-side as a live version and the B-side a studio cut.

The video makes fun of Michael Jackson, who was ripe for parody at the time. For the line "Ain't singing for Pepsi," a Jackson lookalike is shown with his hair on fire, referring to the Pepsi commercial shoot where a spark sent his hair into flames.