Almost Cut My Hair

David Crosby almost cut his hair. He didn’t. He wrote a song about it instead. This might be the most ridiculous premise for a rock song ever written, and it works completely.

“Almost cut my hair / It happened just the other day.” The opening lines are almost comically mundane. But Crosby keeps going, and you realize this isn’t about hair at all. It’s about identity. About refusing to assimilate. About the small acts of resistance that define who we are.

“I feel like letting my freak flag fly.” That line landed differently in 1970, when having long hair could get you beaten up, fired, disowned. It was a visible marker of tribe—a way of announcing which side you were on without saying a word. Crosby understood that symbols matter, that the personal is political, that sometimes the most radical thing you can do is refuse to change.

The music is ragged and glorious. Neil Young’s guitar solo tears through the mix like he’s physically angry. The whole band sounds on edge, slightly out of control, which is exactly right for a song about holding onto something when everyone’s telling you to let go.

There’s a vulnerability underneath the bravado. “I feel like I owe it to someone.” He never says who. Maybe the movement. Maybe himself. Maybe the version of himself that still believes things can change.

Fifty years later, it still sounds like an argument worth having.