Because:
It’s 3 minutes long
Has a great vocal & melody
A yearning mood in a minor key (with weeping pedal steel)
And perfectly simple instrumentation, with just the right variation.
It’s in the canon of great Western pop. It’s been around forever, and it’s been covered by literally hundreds of artists. It was a number 1 hit and successful around the world. Douglas Adams named a spaceship after it.
You know it; I’ve known it since I was a kid.
But maybe its true success is its ambivalence. The dot points above are hallmarks of any good pop song; but you can’t simplify thematic ambivalence the way Neil does – the uncertainty over Whose heart of gold.
The way I’ve read it all this time: Neil wants a good heart for himself. A heart that gives as it lives, in equal measure. A generous heart. A way of living that leans into the good, whose model might yet be found. He’s still searching, he wants it for himself, with the looming threat of old age.
But then on the flip: he’s looking for a partner with a heart of gold. The picture of generosity in a loving other. He’ll cross oceans and visit Hollywood to find someone (say like Carrie Snodgress) to build a life together before it’s too late. In line with Neil’s prescriptive (to put it mildly) A Man Needs a Maid from the same album.
Which then begs the question, how do you mine for a heart like that. Is all that travelling and searching a metaphor for digging for love? Seems wrong, or a bit too loose with the metaphor.
And then the closing lyrics, “you keep me searching…”. Convenient lyric-filler aside, I’m tempted to say that’s Neil addressing himself. And so back to reading 1. But it could also be a dig at someone, post-breakup maybe, who didn’t meet his heart’s need, and hence reading 2.
Or maybe it’s both/and. The search for a partner who’ll unlock his heart, who knows it to be good.
Don’t read too deep perhaps, picking at rocky ambivalence where none was intended, and where intention is as nothing compared to great melody. But that all doesn’t take away from the song’s perfection.
Or maybe there’s another reading… Thoughts?