"Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)", it bookends Young's successful 1979 albumRust Never Sleeps. Inspired by proto-New Wave group Devo, the rise of punk and what Young viewed as his own growing irrelevance, the song today crosses generations, inspiring admirers from punk to grunge and significantly revitalizing Young's then-faltering career. The song is about the alternatives of continuing to produce similar music ("to rust" or — in "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" — "to fade away") or to burn out, as John Lydon of the Sex Pistols might be considered to have done by abandoning his Johnny Rotten persona.
A part of a lyric from the song, "it's better to burn out than to fade away," became infamous after being quoted in Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide note. Young later said that he was so shaken that he dedicated his 1994 album Sleeps with Angels to Cobain. Because of Cobain's suicide, in live concerts he now emphasizes the line "once you're gone you can't come back".