Neil Young was 19 when he recorded the minimalist teenager-in-love tune I'll Love You Forever with his band, The Squires. Starting off with the sound of waves on the beach and a quietly strummed guitar, Neil's voice timidly appears at 0:17. There is an otherworldly quality in his double-tracked vocals and his detached and nonchalant delivery, as though he's in a trance. The melody is a bit dreamy, too, in the way each line ends with Neil remaining on the same high notes, as though drifting aimlessly along with the surf.
The lyrics are pretty generic:
I'll love you forever
and idolize
the way you comb your hair
your laughing eyes
Ah, makes your heart skip a beat, eh? The music primarily takes a back seat to the vocals, although there is the occasional twangy guitar. The whole atmosphere is somewhat like a home movie from that era, with a lingering melancholy of lost innocence. It has a similar feel to Sugar Mountain, a song he wrote around the same time.
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