By following the hi-tech
Trans after only seven months with a rockabilly album,
Neil Young baffled his audience. Just as he had followed the sales peak of
Harvest in 1972 with a series of challenging, uncommercial albums,
Young had now dissipated the commercial and critical acceptance he had enjoyed with 1979's
Rust Never Sleeps with a series of mediocre albums and inexplicable genre exercises.
Everybody's Rockin', credited to "Neil & the Shocking Pinks," represented the nadir of this attempted career suicide. Running less than 25 minutes, it found
Young covering early rock evergreens like "Betty Lou's Got a New Pair of Shoes" and writing a few songs in the same vein ("Kinda Fonda Wanda"). If he had presented this as a mini-album at a discount price, it would have been easier to enjoy the joke
Young seemed to intend. As it was, fans who already had their doubts about
Young dropped off the radar screen;
Everybody's Rockin' was his lowest-charting album since his 1969 solo debut, and he didn't release another album for two years (his longest break ever between records). ~ William Ruhlmann