Songful Style Link Party #44: “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young

Marsha chose this month’s song and it turned out to be a wonderful choice for a Thanksgiving week outfit!

About Songful Style

Songful Style is a style challenge series hosted by Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge, Marsha of Marsha in the Middle, and Suzy of Suzy Turner, The Grey Brunette.

Each month we will share a song with the lyrics and video and we invite you to use whatever aspect of the song that inspires you to create an outfit. 

It is similar to Style Imitating Art where we use artwork to inspire our outfit creations. Except Songful Style gives you lyrics, music, video, and album artwork to inspire your fashion creativity. You may even find inspiration in a memory triggered by the selected song. It is all open to your own personal interpretation and just a fun way to discover new music and get a little bit more creative with your wardrobe.

Anyone is welcome to join us on a permanent basis or you can just play along without any obligation to do anything other than feel inspired. We are flexible and fun and just want to find more ways to play dress up because it’s what we enjoy doing! 

We will be posting on the last Monday of each month and will announce our song choice for the following month at the end of each post. You are welcome to style your own song inspired outfit and add it to the link party or link anything that you want to share even if it has nothing to do with the song.

The Video

The Lyrics

Come a little bit closer
Hear what I have to say
Just like children sleepin'
We could dream this night away

But there's a full moon risin'
Let's go dancin' in the light
We know where the music's playin'
Let's go out and feel the night

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon

When we were strangers
I watched you from afar
When we were lovers
I loved you with all my heart

But now it's gettin' late
And the moon is climbin' high
I want to celebrate
See it shinin' in your eye

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon

About the Artist and the Song

Neil Percival Young was born on November 12, 1945, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the second son of journalist, sportswriter, and novelist Scott Alexander Young and his wife, Edna Blow Ragland “Rassy” Young, a Daughter of the American Revolution. Young’s parents were both Canadian although his mother had American and French ancestry. They were married in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1940 and moved to Toronto shortly thereafter where their first son, Robert “Bob” Young, was born in 1942. Soon after Neil was born in 1945, the family relocated to rural Omemee, Ontario, which Young remembers fondly as a “sleepy little place.”

In the summer of 1951, five year old Neil contracted polio which partially paralyzed his left side. To help with their son’s recovery, the Young family began to winter in Florida for the milder weather. They returned to Canada in 1952 and moved around frequently. When Neil was 12 years old, his mother sought a divorce after discovering that her husband had several extramarital affairs. When the divorce was granted in 1960, Neil and his mother moved to Winnipeg while his father and brother remained in Toronto.

In the mid-1950s, Neil began listening to a variety of musical genres which started shaping his musical aspirations. Influenced by artists like Elvis Presley, whom he idolized, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison, Neil began to play music on a plastic ukulele. The ukulele led to the guitar which eventually landed Neil Young in the number 83 spot on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. He is a multi-instrumentalist, most notably on electric guitar, piano, and harmonica. He also plays banjo, keyboards, ukulele, and percussion instruments such as the glockenspiel and marimba.

Neil Young’s musical career officially began in the 1960s in Winnipeg. In 1966, he founded the rock band Buffalo Springfield in Los Angeles, California, with Bruce Palmer, Dewey Martin, Stephen Stills, and Richard Furay. The band was successful but by 1968, Stills had left to form Crosby, Stills & Nash, Furay left to form Poco, and Young kicked off his solo career which was followed by a reunion with Stills in 1969 to form Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Neil Young’s prolific music career has garnered him dozens of Grammy nominations with three wins as well as two separate inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a solo artist and as a member of Buffalo Springfield). His list of awards is extensive and can be found here. If you would like to learn more about his career, Wikipedia provides a detailed biography.

On a more personal note, Neil Young has been married three times. In December 1968, he married restaurant owner Susan Acevedo, who filed for divorce in October 1970. After his divorce, Young was in a long term relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress until 1975. The couple had a son Zeke, born on September 8, 1972. In 1974, he met singer/songwriter Pegi Morton who was working as a waitress at a diner near his California ranch. The couple married in August 1978 and subsequently had two children together, Ben and Amber. After 36 years of marriage, the couple divorced in 2014 and Young gave Pegi the ranch where she lived until her death on January 1, 2019. Shortly after his 2014 divorce from Pegi, Young met and started dating actress Darryl Hannah. They were married on August 25, 2018. Sadly, both of Young’s sons have been diagnosed with cerebral palsy while his daughter has epilepsy.

As of 2020, Neil Young holds dual citizenship in his home country of Canada as well as in the United States. After gaining U.S. citizenship, Young moved back to Canada for the first time in 50 years. He and Darryl Hannah live in a cottage near Omemee, Ontario, the town where he lived for the first 7 years of his life.

Our inspiration song, “Harvest Moon” was released in November 1992 as the first single from his 19th album bearing the same name. The song was written and produced by Young and features Linda Ronstadt on backup vocals. It reached number 36 on the UK Singles Chart and has been ranked as Neil Young’s 30th best song by Rolling Stone out of his official catalog of 1,180 songs. The official “Harvest Moon” video stars Young in multiple roles flashing between 1967 and 1992.

Although I have heard this song probably a thousand times over the last 33 years, the whole vibe and sound is so quintessentially Neil Young that I always assumed it was written and recorded in the 1960s or 1970s. So I learned something new from this challenge which is always a good thing!

About My Outfit

Onto my outfit. Many times for style challenges like this one, I dive deep into literal interpretations. I first watched the video a bunch of times and was going to use the outfits in the video as my inspiration. I was thinking a flirty little floral dress with cowgirl boots or some cut off jean shorts with a plaid shirt. But then I decided instead to lean into the whole idea of a harvest moon, especially since we celebrate Thanksgiving this week. It seemed such a serendipitous challenge for this holiday week.

Although the song is not at all about Thanksgiving, it was released just before Thanksgiving and the lyrics really do express a certain gratitude and thankfulness for an enduring lifelong love. So I started with my Thanksgiving themed Frankendress. The Grateful-Thankful-Blessed graphic combined with the tribal print on the skirt that features little moons seemed perfect for representing the song title as well as the upcoming holiday.

To add some extra warmth to this short sleeved dress, I layered a long sleeve black tee underneath and a green lace and velvet ruana on top. I prefer the dress without the green topper but I really wanted to wear my new eel skin cowgirl boots and the topper pulled in some green to coordinate with the shafts of my boots. Because there is a lot of plaid clothing that appears in the music video, I added a recently thrifted plaid scarf in coordinating autumn colors. I accessorized with a wire wrapped moon pendant necklace, a thrifted sequined owl necklace, and a pair of flea market copper earrings. I added my black felt floppy hat with a blingy rooster brooch because I definitely associate roosters with harvest time.

In the end, while I didn’t love the green topper, I did love the rest of the outfit. Perhaps I will even wear it on Thanksgiving Day. I decided I didn’t feel like cooking this year and since it is just the four us, we made reservations at the Japanese steakhouse for a sushi-filled Thanksgiving dinner!

I hope you will check out how my songfully stylish friends have interpreted this song into an outfit. Just click the links to their blogs below for more fashion inspiration.

• Marsha of Marsha in the Middle
• Suzy of Suzy Turner, The Grey Brunette

Featured Favorite from Songful Style Link Party #43: “I Put a Spell on You” by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy

If you enjoyed our musically inspired outfits for this round, please come back on January 26, 2026, to see how we style my next song choice, “The Greatest Man I Never Knew” by Reba McIntyre. (We will be taking a short holiday hiatus for December.) These style challenges are such a great way to learn new music or revisit old songs and to view your wardrobe from a totally different perspective. If you are feeling in the mood for some good old fashioned dress up fun, won’t you join us for a round of Songful Style!

Happy styling and Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!

Keeping it on the edge, 

Shelbee