My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)

"My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)"
Single by Neil Young and Crazy Horse
from the album Rust Never Sleeps
A-side"Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"
ReleasedAugust 27, 1979
RecordedMay 26, 1978
VenueBoarding House, San Francisco, California
GenreAcoustic rock[1]
Length3:45
LabelReprise
Songwriter(s)
  • Neil Young
  • Jeff Blackburn
Producer(s)
Neil Young and Crazy Horse singles chronology
"Four Strong Winds"
(1978) 		"My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)"
(1979) 		"The Loner (Live)"
(1980)

"My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" is a song by Canadian musician Neil Young. An acoustic song, it was recorded live in early 1978 at the Boarding House in San Francisco, California. Combined with its hard rock counterpart "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)", it bookends Young's 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps.[2] Inspired by electropunk group Devo, the rise of punk and what Young viewed as his own growing irrelevance, the song significantly revitalized Young's career.[3]

The line, "it's better to burn out than to fade away" was taken from one of the songs of Young's bandmate in the short-lived supergroup The Ducks, Jeff Blackburn.[4] It became infamous after being quoted in Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide note.[5] Young later said that he was so shaken that he dedicated his 1994 album Sleeps with Angels to Cobain.

  1. ^ Boehm, Mike (August 12, 1989). "O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Neil Young, 43, Finds an Angry Focus for '90s". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
  2. ^ "Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Rust Never Sleeps". Discogs. 1979. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
  3. ^ Rieff, Corbin (2014-07-02). "35 years ago: Neil Young releases 'Rust never sleeps'". Ultimate Classic Rock. Townsquare Media. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
  4. ^ McDonough, Jimmy (2002). Shakey : Neil Young's biography (1st ed.). New York: Random House. pp. 534–535. ISBN 0-679-42772-4. OCLC 47844513.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference suicidenote was invoked but never defined (see the help page).