Neil Young, shown in 2019, also recently urged a boycott of Amazon and called for a national strike after two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.Amy Harris/The Canadian Press
This note’s for you, Greenland.
Rocker Neil Young has gifted access to his songs to the people of Greenland. The gesture is a response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s designs on acquiring the autonomous territory of Denmark.
In a post on his NYA Times-Contrarian news site, the dual citizen of Canada and the United States pledged a year’s worth of free online availability to “all of our friends” in Greenland, an icy island with a population of less than 60,000.
“I hope my Music and Music Films will ease some of the unwarranted stress and threats you are experiencing from our unpopular and hopefully temporary government,” wrote the 80-year-old Young, who acquired U.S. citizenship in 2020. “It is my sincere wish for you to be able to enjoy all of my music in your beautiful Greenland home …”
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The Heart of Gold singer’s full music catalogue, including content not available elsewhere, is available on the Neil Young Archives website. Subscription options range from US$24.99 to US$99.99. To be eligible for the free offer, a cellphone with a Greenland country code is required.
The Greenland freebie offer was one of several political messages recently voiced by Young. In another post late last week, he blasted Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and urged a boycott of the e-commerce platform because of the former CEO’s political affiliations.
“Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, a billionaire backer of the president,” Young wrote in a post to his website on Jan. 23. “The president’s international policies and support of ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] make it impossible for me to ignore his actions. If you feel as I do, I strongly recommend that you do not use Amazon.”
Young, who in October pledged to pull his music from Amazon, also declared that his music “will never be available on Amazon, as long as it is owned by Bezos.”
In 2022, Young boycotted Spotify because the streaming service carried Joe Rogan’s podcast, which he said spouted vaccine misinformation. Young returned his music to Spotify in 2024 after Rogan ended his exclusive distribution contract with the streaming platform.
On Sunday, Young posted on the NYA Times-Contrarian urging a national strike if Trump did not resign in the wake of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Renee Nicole Macklin Good was killed by an ICE officer on Jan. 7. Alex Pretti was shot by U.S. Border Patrol officers on Jan. 24.
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The Trump administration has dispatched thousands of officers and agents to Minnesota as part of a national crackdown on illegal immigration.
In 1970, Young reacted to U.S. citizens killed by federal forces in another Midwestern state. The song Ohio, written by the singer-songwriter and recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, protested the deaths of four unarmed college students shot by the Ohio National Guard during an anti-Vietnam War rally at Kent State University campus.
With its iconic line, “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming,” the protest ballad has been invoked amidst heightened tensions in Minneapolis. On Friday, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds performed Ohio (with a refrain from Rage Against the Machine’s anti-police brutality song Killing in the Name) at a concert in Riviera Maya, Mexico.