Neil Young has released his 50th studio album, Second Song, featuring new recordings with the Chrome Hearts alongside rare teenage compositions written in Canada during the mid-1960s. Recorded to tape at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu and produced by Lou Adler, the record blends fresh acoustic meditations with archival history.
Revisiting 1960s Teenage Compositions With the Chrome Hearts
Neil Young has unlocked his massive personal archive to bridge the gap between his earliest compositional work and his present-day studio output. Second Song, his 50th studio album released on September 18, 2026, features fresh recordings of two songs he originally wrote as a teenager in Canada. According to NPR, the project relies on an interplay between the artist’s youthful perspective and his current musical placement.
Among those vintage pieces is I’ll Love You Forever
, a love song Young originally wrote and recorded on November 23, 1964, at radio station CJLX in Fort William, Ontario, while performing with his early Winnipeg band The Squires. As Noise11.com notes, that initial session was organized by a local DJ to help the teenage musician get airplay. The track remained unreleased for decades until it finally surfaced in 2009 on Neil Young Archives Vol. 1: 1963-1972. More than six decades later, Young has tracked a brand-new studio version alongside his current touring and recording ensemble, the Chrome Hearts.
The updated recording shifts the instrumentation significantly. While the original 1964 recording featured Young on guitar and vocals, Ken Koblun on bass, and Bill Edmondson on drums, the Chrome Hearts arrangement incorporates Anthony LoGerfo on drums, Corey McCormick on bass and vocals, Micah Nelson on electric guitar and vocals, and Spooner Oldham on Hammond B3 organ. Alongside I’ll Love You Forever
, the album revives Casting Me Away From You
, a tune Young first recorded around 1965 in a friend’s attic in Toronto.
Unorthodox Sessions at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu
The album was captured live to analog tape at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, California. Production duties were handled by Lou Adler—noted for his work on Carole King’s multi-million selling masterpiece Tapestry—alongside the Volume Dealers, consisting of engineer Niko Bolas and Young himself.
“It’s a little unusual from my normal way of producing – not a little, a lot. You have to look for the cracks and offer your assistance, input, opinion. Everything just sort of happened. We started, and then it went.”
Lou Adler, Producer, via MusicRadar
Young maintained a strict methodology during the sessions, keeping his backing band intentionally unfamiliar with the material before hitting record. The ensemble reportedly cut four tracks within their first day in the studio, adhering to a strict rule allowing just three takes per song—though one track, Earth Girl,
required seven takes to complete.
Personal Reflections and the Passage of Time
The 80-year-old songwriter’s attention these days seems largely dominated by his Archives project.
Earth Girl
serves as a dedication to his wife, actor Daryl Hannah, featuring dual overlapping melodies. The final track, I’ll Love You Forever,
was originally written as a teenage tribute to his high school girlfriend, Pam Smith, yet Young views the sentiment as enduring.
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