Prairie Wind


Prairie Wind is the 26th studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on September 27, 2005. After dalliances with 1960s soul music and rock opera, Prairie Wind featured an acoustic-based sound reminiscent of his earlier commercially successful albums Harvest and Harvest Moon. The album was in part inspired by the illness and recent death of his father, Canadian sportswriter and novelist Scott Young, and the album is dedicated in part to the elder Young.
Young recorded the album in Nashville before undergoing minimally invasive surgery for an aneurysm in the spring of 2005, and some of the songs on the album appear to be informed by Young confronting his own mortality.
A premiere live performance of Prairie Wind was held in 18–19 August 2005 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Here, Young held a two-night concert where songs from the album were performed. These concerts became the subject of a film directed by Jonathan Demme entitled .
Young debuted the album's closing track, "When God Made Me", at the Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario, Canada.

Commercial performance

The album debuted on the Billboard 200 album chart at number 11, on October 15, 2005, with sales of approximately 72,000 copies. It remained on the chart for 26 weeks. It was awarded a certified gold record by the RIAA on January 23, 2006. Prairie Wind received two Grammy Award nominations at the 2006 Grammy Awards - Best Rock Album of the Year and Best Rock Solo Performance for "The Painter".

Critical reception

The record was regarded by Robert Christgau as "one of those nearness-of-death albums", along with Mississippi John Hurt's Last Sessions, Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind, Warren Zevon's The Wind, and Johnny Cash's .

Track listing

All songs written by Neil Young

Personnel