Songfacts®:

• Neil Young has long been a prophetic voice, echoing the plight of Earth and humanity's relentless cruelty towards nature since as far back as 1970. In the haunting tapestry of "After The Gold Rush," Young painted a dystopian canvas eerily similar to our current reality.
  
  Like 2021's Barn, World Record - his 42nd album, and 13th with Crazy Horse - takes us on an introspective journey.
  
  World Record opens with this poignant track where Young muses on the earth's boundless beauty, where azure skies and crystalline waters intertwine like a whimsical love affair. In his signature style, Young punctuates this portrait of an idyllic landscape with a bittersweet sigh, acknowledging that "we lived by the sun and had it all. We were living in a dream."
• Rick Rubin produced World Record at his Shangri-La studios in Malibu. Young used the same studio to record his 2016 album, Peace Trail.
• Most of the World Record tracks started as melodies Young whistled to himself while walking in the woods. These melodic whispers blossomed into complete songs, penned from start to finish within a mere two days.
  
  "The vibe was relaxed and connections between the players after knowing each other for 50 years are telepathic," Rubin told Uncut magazine. "Neil usually records everything live at once, and that was the case here. We found ways of getting Neil's vocals To be loud and clear enough to understand the words, which isn't always easy singing live in the room with a band that plays so very loud."