Like two other songs from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, "Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Down by the River", Young wrote "Cinnamon Girl" while he was suffering from the flu with a high fever at his home in Topanga, California.
This song displays the very prominent role played by Danny Whitten in the sound of Young's early recordings. The vocals are a duet, with Whitten singing the high harmony against Young's low harmony. (The 45 rpm single mix of the song, in addition to being in mono and cutting off the guitar outro, features Whitten's vocal more prominently than the album version.) Young performed the song on his then-recently acquired Gibson Les Paul, "Old Black".
Lyrics
I wanna live
With a cinnamon girl
I could be happy
The rest of my life
With a cinnamon girl
A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together
Chasing the moonlight
My cinnamon girl
Ten silver saxes
A bass with a bow
The drummer relaxes
And waits between shows
For his cinnamon girl
A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together
Chasing the moonlight
My cinnamon girl
Pa send me money now
I'm gonna make it somehow
I need another chance
You see your baby loves to dance
Yeah...yeah...yeah
