Who would you prefer: the weakest link on the ‘90s sitcom NewsRadio or the legend who wrote “Cinnamon Girl”? That’s the choice Neil Young is giving Spotify. The music streamer is home to dozens and dozens of Neil Young releases, from his self-titled 1969 debut to last year’s excellent Crazy Horse reunion Barn. It’s also home to the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, whose host regularly spouts misinformation about the two-years-old-and-counting pandemic.
Now Young is taking a stand. As per Rolling Stone, the rocker wrote a letter to his management and label, sking them to remove some of the greatest songs ever recorded from the streamer that also allows a guy who used to force people to eat bugs to help make a public health crisis even worse.
“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” Young wrote. “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.”
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he charged. “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Young is the latest figure to come out against Rogan, who has fed his 11 million subscribers nonsense that is sometimes debunked on his show by his guests. Earlier this month, 250 doctors signed an open letter, begging Spotify to “to take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform” by implementing a policy against misinformation. Meanwhile, the day before Young came out against Rogan, the U.S. saw almost 700,000 new COVID cases, as well as over 2,000 COVID-related deaths.
In the meantime, you better take one last spin of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, On the Beach, Tonight’s the Night, maybe even Everybody’s Rockin’ before it vamooses, all for a guy who’d rather take medication also used on horses than get a free and effective vaccine.
(Via Rolling Stone)
Neil Young is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
