Landing on Water was Neil Young's 1986 return to rock music, after experimenting with rockabilly, electronica and country over his last few albums. Once again, however, Young did not play with Crazy Horse, with whom he had not worked for several years, and even went as far as to claim he would never play with them again, intensely frustrating the band at the time, who found this out from an interview they read. Critical reaction to this album is generally poor, citing mainly the obvious 1980s stadium drums, messy production and generally poor quality songs. Some fans, however, praise the album, believing that this album may have been an attempt to simply annoy David Geffen, owner of Geffen Records who was suing him at the time for producing 'unrepresentative, uncommercial music'. The album contains the acidic shot at his erstwhile bandmate David Crosby and cohorts, "Hippie Dream", which features the lyric And the wooden ships/Are a hippie dream/Capsized in excess/If you know what I mean.

Track listing

All tracks written by Neil Young.

Side one

1. "Weight of the World" – 3:40
2. "Violent Side"* – 4:22
3. "Hippie Dream" – 4:11
4. "Bad News Beat" – 3:18
5. "Touch the Night"* – 4:30

Side two

1. "People on the Street" – 4:33
2. "Hard Luck Stories" – 4:06
3. "I Got a Problem" – 3:16
4. "Pressure" – 2:46
5. "Drifter" – 5:05

Personnel

• Neil Young - lead guitar, synthesizer, vocals
• Danny Kortchmar - guitar, synthesizer, vocals
• Steve Jordan - drums, synthesizer, vocals
• San Francisco Boys Chorus on tracks 2 & 5