The album that spawned the legendary phrase "It's better to burn out than to fade away," Rust Never Sleeps also has the distinction of being the last great Neil Young album ever made, reaching heights he would only sporadically hit again.
Rust has the feel of a live album, but only "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" and "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" are recorded live. The latter is an acoustic ballad that kicks off the disc and serves as a critical look at the rock and roll industry as well as Neil's ruminations on aging. "The King is gone but he's not forgotten / This is the story of a Johnny Rotten / It's better to burn out than it is to rust," Neil sings, in between soulful bursts on a harmonica.
The latter is an electric version, lengthened and with slightly different lyrics, but packing the same punch as the acoustic version. Young divides the album into a folk/acoustic side and a rock side, enlisting the help of Crazy Horse, and while this tactic doesn't work with many artists it adds to the strength of this disc, which starts slowly and works its way toward the "Hey Hey" finale, encapsulating the heartache of fame, loneliness and social commentary. 
"Thrasher" is an example of the dual nature at work here, with lyrics that could be interpreted as the advent of technology or the pressures of fame. In fact, it is the latter, with Young talking about his relationship in Crosby Stills & Nash in lines like "So I got bored and left them there / They were just dead weight to me / Better down the road without that load." It's set to a lone acoustic guitar and harmonica, a heartfelt elegy with passion and longing. "Pocahontas" is another winner in this vein, a song about journeying through time (a motif of Young around this period), with the narrator wishing to, ah, sleep with Pocahontas to find out how she felt about the advent of modernism, such as taxis and the Astrodome. That Young makes it sound convincing is a testament to how on top of his game he was at this period in his career.
But the album erupts on the second side with "Powderfinger," a story of a lone young man in the Old West left alone to defend the frontier and family property. The song is electric folk, with Young's high, broken voice perfectly summing up the fear and indecision that comes from being young and not knowing what to do when asked to carry the burden. In a sense, it could be Young's rumination on life and mortality as well, with the closing lines of "Shelter me from the powder and the finger / Cover me with the thought that pulled the trigger / Think of me as one you'd never figured / Would fade away so young."
Yet for all its morbid and serious themes, Young has a bit of fun on two of the songs, "Ride My Llama" and "Welfare Mothers." The former is an acoustic ballad about Martians who play guitar - trust me, it's better than it sounds - and the latter is an electric near-punk rocker about getting it on with divorced moms on welfare. And you thought the MILF concept was invented in American Pie.Finally, "Sedan Delivery" is a truly odd song, a cross between flat-out Ramones punk and psychedelic bridges, with the two sounding like they were meant to be completely different songs. The lyrics are a stream-of-consciouness rant about random occurrences, the madness of the world and the need to get away, but coming after the emotion and fun of the other tracks it just doesn't work, especially with the dichotomy of the song. Not a clunker by any means, but a bit of a letdown after the other highlights.
There are times when people question Neil's appeal or wonder why the grunge bands were so enraptured with him. Reportedly, Kurt Cobain was listening to "Hey Hey, My My" shortly before he shot himself, which led Neil to stop playing it in concert. But one listen to this proves why he was such an inspiration, and for Young neophytes it's the best place to start.