Déjà Vu

Déjà Vu, released March 11, 1970, was the first and only studio album credited to the full quartet of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It was recorded between July 1969 and January 1970 at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco and Hollywood, with Neil Young joining David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash after the trio's acclaimed 1969 debut.

The sessions were difficult. Stephen Stills later estimated the album consumed around 800 hours of studio time, and the songs were largely tracked separately rather than as a working band, with each member bringing in finished or near-finished material for the others to layer harmonies onto. David Crosby was grieving the recent death of his girlfriend Christine Hinton and later admitted he was "not at my best as a functioning person" during the recording. Graham Nash described the overall mood of the sessions as dark, shaped by that loss and by other breakups within the group's circle.

Despite the fractured process, the album was a commercial triumph. It topped the Billboard 200, produced three Top 40 singles, and remains the best-selling album in the individual catalogs of all four members. Critical reception at the time was more divided: some reviewers found the harmonies overly polished, while others singled out individual tracks, including Young's "Helpless," as the record's strongest material.