CSN is the third studio album by Crosby, Stills & Nash, released on Atlantic Records on June 17, 1977. It is the group's second studio release in the trio configuration. It peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart; two singles taken from the album, Nash's "Just a Song Before I Go" (No. 7) and Stills' "Fair Game" (No. 43) charted on the Billboard Hot 100. As of 2012 it is the trio configuration's best selling record, outselling 1969's Crosby, Stills & Nash by 200,000 copies. It has been certified quadruple platinum by RIAA.
Following their tour in the spring and summer of 1970 to support DéjàVu, Crosby, Stills and Nash had only completed one project together, a 1974 reunion tour of CSNY. David Crosby and Graham Nash had recorded three albums as a duo, with Crosby releasing a single solo album (in addition to a Byrds reunion album) and Nash a pair. Stephen Stills pursued other projects including the release of four solo albums, a short career with Manassas that yielded two albums, as well as a tour and an album with Neil Young, which itself nearly became a CSNY project.
CSN featured strong writing from all three members, the last time for seven years that the band would compose songs and handle vocals without major assistance from outside sources.
Many of Stills' songs on the album echo his marital problems, with "Dark Star" returning to the Latin rhythms he had favored all the way back to his Buffalo Springfield days. Crosby continued the existential probings consistent with much of his past work, and Nash offered both a radio-ready acoustic ballad with "Just a Song Before I Go", and an elaborate set piece re-creating a vision of an LSD experience that he had in Winchester Cathedral with "Cathedral". Many tracks included a string section, a first on a CSN project.
The album was released for compact disc an initial time in the 1980s, then again at Ocean View Digital from the original tapes and reissued on September 20, 1994. It was remastered once more by Steve Hoffman in April 2013, for an Audio Fidelity 24kt gold disk release in the summer of 2013.
Cash Box said that "Fair Game" "combines a snappy Latin rhythm, neatly interlocking harmonies, and layers of Stephen Stills' thoughtful acoustic guitar work." It commented on the "surging guitars and piano" and "harmonic hooks" and "powerful rhythmic elements" of "I Give You Give Blind".
Record World called "Fair Game" a "mid-tempo Stills song with samba touches, with the trio's trademark vocal harmonies again standing out."
Additional musicians
Production