Neil Young and Pearl Jam - Rockin' In The Free World (2nafish)

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"Rockin' in the Free World" is a song by Neil Young, released on his 1989 album Freedom. Two versions of the song were released, similar to the song "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" of Young's Rust Never Sleeps album, one of which is performed with a predominantly acoustic arrangement, and the other with a predominantly electric arrangement.

Pearl Jam regularly covers this song in concert, playing it along with "Yellow Ledbetter" as the closer. The band played the song as part of the 1992 MTV Unplugged performance and also alongside Young at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards.

The song was first performed live on February 21, 1989 in Seattle with Young's band The Restless.

The book Shakey by Jimmy McDonough claims the song originated when Young was on tour in the late 1980s. He and Frank "Poncho" Sampedro saw newspaper photos of the Ayatollah Khomeini's body being carried to his grave as mourners were burning American flags in the street. Sampedro commented, "Whatever we do, we shouldn't go near the Mideast. It's probably better we just keep on rockin' in the free world." Young asked if Sampedro intended to use this idea as the basis of a song and when Sampedro said no, Young said that he would do so instead. However Khomeini's death occurred months after the first live performance of the song.

The lyrics criticize the George H. W. Bush administration and the social problems of contemporary American life, directly referencing Bush's famous "thousand points of light" remark from his 1989 inaugural address.

An edited version of the song accompanies the end credits of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11; the phrase "That's one more kid thatΓΓé¼Γäóll never go to school / Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool," which originally referenced the second verse's abandoned child, now appears to reference a US soldier killed in Iraq.

The song is rated number 214 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time

Freedom is a studio album album by Neil Young released in 1989.

Freedom relaunched Neil Young's career, after a mostly unsuccessful decade. After many arguments (and a lawsuit), Young left Geffen Records and returned to his original label, Reprise, in 1988 with This Note's for You. Freedom, however, brought about a new, critical and commercially successful album in the mold of his 1979 classic album, Rust Never Sleeps. Both albums consist of live songs with the audience track mainly removed. Freedom also contains one song, "Rockin' in the Free World", bookending the album in acoustic and electric variants, a stylistic choice previously featured on Rust Never Sleeps. "Rockin' in the Free World", despite lyrics critical of the then-new George H. W. Bush administration ("we got a thousand points of light"; "kinder, gentler machine gun hand"), became the de facto anthem of the collapse of communism (specifically the Fall of the Berlin Wall which occurred a month into the album's release) because of its repeated chorus of 'Keep on Rockin' in the Free World'.


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