While flipping through the ~900 videos on our YouTube channel this morning, I noticed a few songs being performed again and again over the years. For today’s Music Monday, I thought it might be fun to share the evolution of one song as it’s been performed at several different Farm Aid shows. "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young seems like a fine song to start with.

"Heart of Gold" was originally released in 1972 on Neil’s classic Harvest album and is (so far) his only #1 hit single in the U.S. In response to the song’s success, he wrote the following in the liner notes for 1977’s Decade; “This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.” You can read more about the song on Wikipedia.

In any case, Neil has performed the song many times over the years at Farm Aid. Below you can see it in chronological order from the first Farm Aid in 1985 (coincidentally, our most popular video on YouTube, with almost one million views), 1992, 1995 (with Willie Nelson), 1998, and 2011.

Do you have a favorite version? Should we do this again with another song?