"Powderfinger" is a song written by Neil Young, first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It subsequently appeared on several of Young's live recordings. The 2014 Rolling Stone special issue on Young ranked it as Young's best song ever.

It has been covered by Cowboy Junkies, Beat Farmers, Rusted Root, Jazz Mandolin Project, and The Redactions. The Australian rock band Powderfinger took their name from this song.

"Powderfinger" is the first song of the second, electric, side of Rust Never Sleeps. Allmusic critic Jason Ankeny describes the song, following the album's mellower, acoustic first side, as "a sudden, almost blindsiding metamorphosis, which is entirely the point — it's the shot you never saw coming." The lyrics are the posthumous narration of a young man who attempts to protect his family against an approaching gunboat. He realizes that all of the older men are unavailable, leaving him "to do the thinking". After initial indecision, he eventually takes action, and is ultimately killed. He describes his death with the gruesome line "my face splashed in the sky."Johnny Rogan describes the last verse as the character's "moving epitaph":

The lines about fading away so young echo the line "it's better to burn out than to fade away", which Young sings on the opening song of Rust Never Sleeps, "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)". Ankeny feels that the song's first-person narrative "evokes traditional folk storytelling" but the music is "incendiary rock & roll", and praises the "mythical proportions" of Young's guitar solos as the story approaches its "harrowing" conclusion. Allmusic critic William Ruhlmann described the song as "remarkable", considering it the best of the great songs on Rust Never Sleeps. Rogan describes it as one of "Young's great narrative songs" and "almost cinematic in execution." Rogan also praises Crazy Horse's backing as "ideal" and permitting Young to "invest the song with epic significance."Rolling Stone Magazine critic Paul Nelson compared the violence in the song to the helicopter scene with Robert Duvall in the movie Apocalypse Now in that it is "both appalling and appealing — to us and to its narrator — until it's too late." According to Nelson, it generates "traumatizing" tension and "unbearable" empathy and fascination as he "tightens the screws on his youthful hero with some galvanizing guitar playing, while Crazy Horse cuts loose with everything they've got." Nelson points out that the music incorporates "a string of ascending [guitar] notes cut off by a deadly descending chord", what critic Greil Marcus described as "fatalism in a phrase".

...
Wikipedia