Although Young has experimented widely with soul, swing, jazz, rockabilly, and electronica throughout a varied career, his most accessible and best known work generally falls into either of two distinct styles: an acoustic, country-tinged folk rock, such songs like "Heart of Gold" or "Old Man," or grinding, lumbering form of hard rock, heard on songs like "Cinnamon Girl" or "Southern Man."

Young first came to prominence as a member of the folk-rock band Buffalo Springfield in the mid-1960s and then as a solo performer backed by the band Crazy Horse. He reached his commercial peak during the singer-songwriter boom of the early 1970s with the albums After the Gold Rush and Harvest as well as with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. He has long been distrustful of commercial management in the music business, and has at times created highly accessible and durable popular music while at other times has indulged in outlandish and uncompromising experiments that have left audiences, critics, and—in one notable case—his record label baffled.

Young has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2000, the cable music channel VH1 ranked Young 30th on a list of the Top 100 Artists of Rock and Roll. He was also 30th on VH1's list of Top 100 Hard Rock Artists.

Young has directed or co-directed a number of films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), and Greendale (2003).