Cinnamon Girl
| "Cinnamon Girl" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Cover of German issue single |
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| Single by Neil Young & Crazy Horse | ||||
| from the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere | ||||
| B-side | "Sugar Mountain" | |||
| Released | April 20, 1970 | |||
| Format | 45 rpm Record | |||
| Recorded | March 20, 1969 at Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood, CA | |||
| Genre | Hard rock | |||
| Length | 2:58 | |||
| Label | Reprise | |||
| Writer(s) | Neil Young | |||
| Producer | Neil Young David Briggs |
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| Neil Young & Crazy Horse singles chronology | ||||
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"Cinnamon Girl" is a song by Neil Young. It debuted on the 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which was also Young's first album with backing band Crazy Horse. Released as a single the following year, it reached #55 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970.
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Performance notes[edit]
Like two other songs from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, "Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Down by the River," Young wrote "Cinnamon Girl" while he was suffering from the flu with a high fever at his home at Topanga.[1][2]
This song displays the very prominent role played by Danny Whitten in the sound of Young's early recordings. The vocals are a duet, with Whitten singing the high harmony against Young's low harmony. Young performed the song on his then-recently acquired Gibson Les Paul, "Old Black".
The song was written in double-drop D tuning (DADGBD). This tuning is used in several of his most famous songs, such as "The Loner", "The Old Laughing Lady", "When You Dance I Can Really Love", "Ohio", and "Cortez the Killer".[citation needed] The music features a prominent descending bass guitar line.[3]
The lyrics have the singer daydreaming for a girl to love, singing that he waits "between shows" for his lover.[4] Young has claimed that he wrote the song "for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me through Phil Ochs' eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife."[3] The city girl playing finger cymbals is a reference to folk singer Jean Ray.[4] Music critic Johnny Rogan described the lyrics as "exotic and allusive without really saying anything at all."[3] Critic Toby Creswell describes the lyrics as "cryptic love lyrics" noting that they are sung "over the crunching power of Crazy Horse."[2] Critic John Mendelsohn felt the song conveyed a message of "desperation begetting brutal vindictiveness," hinted at by the "almost impenetrably subjective words" but carried strongly by the sound of Crazy Horse's "heavy, sinister accompaniment."[2]
It has no compositional relation to the 2004 song of the same name by Prince.
Notable covers[edit]
"Cinnamon Girl" has been covered by many artists:
- The Gentrys on their eponymous album for Sun Records (1970). Their version reached #52 on the Billboard chart, slightly outperforming Young's original. The Gentrys' version actually charted before Neil Young's did.[citation needed]
- Hole used the song's main riff in the track "Starbelly", on their 1991 debut album Pretty on the Inside.
- Type O Negative on their 1996 album October Rust.
- John Entwistle of The Who recorded a version of the song as an outtake for his 1971 solo album Smash Your Head Against the Wall.
- The Smashing Pumpkins released a version on the 2012 reissue of Pisces Iscariot.
- Radiohead has performed a cover version at their live shows (Yokohama Arena, Santa Barbara Bowl - 2001).[5]
References[edit]
- ^ Williamson, N. (2002). Journey Through the Past: The Stories Behind the Classic Songs of Neil Young. Hal Leonard. pp. 27–28. ISBN 9780879307417.
- ^ a b c Creswell, T. (2006). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder's Mouth Press. pp. 267, 372. ISBN 1560259159.
- ^ a b c Rogan, J. (1996). The Complete Guide to the Music of Neil Young. Omnibus Press. p. 18. ISBN 0711953996.
- ^ a b Bielen, K. (2008). The Words and Music of Neil Young. Praeger. p. 11. ISBN 0275999025.
- ^ setlist.fm
External links[edit]
- Planer, Lindsay (2008). "'Cinnamon Girl' review", AllMusic.
- Full lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
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