A punchy electric number, in which Neil yearns for an idealized trope of a woman (something which, itself, would become a trope in his lyrics), “Cinnamon Girl” is the first song on 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, the first album to be credited to “Neil Young with Crazy Horse.”

It was released as a single (backed with “Sugar Mountain”) on April 20th, 1970, peaking at number 55 on the Billboard Top 100.

In the liner notes to the Decade album Neil cryptically stated:

Wrote this for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me thru Phil Ochs eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife.

Young wrote the while he had a high fever. The “city girl playing finger cymbals” is a reference to folk singer Jean Ray. This song displays the very prominent role played by Danny Whitten in the sound of Young’s early recordings. The vocals are a duet, with Whitten singing the high harmony with Young doing the low harmony.