[3][4] Like three other songs from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, "Cinnamon Girl", "Down by the River" and the title track, Young wrote "Cowgirl in the Sand" while he was suffering from the flu with a high fever at his home in Topanga, California.
"[7] Author David Downing suggests that this line reflects ambiguity as to whether increased sexual freedom is a blessing or whether it is a curse.
[6] Downing, however, feels that the next line, "it's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game", was already outdated when the song was released in the late 1960s.
[6] At the time of the song's initial release, Rolling Stone described the lyrics as "quietly accusative".
[7] Rolling Stone considered Young's vocal performance as "the real key to the success of this track", particularly praising the "depth" of his voice.
[9] Allmusic critic Matthew Greenwald described "Cowgirl in the Sand" as "one of Neil Young's most lasting compositions" and "a true classic".
[3] Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield calls it and "Down by the River" the "key tracks" on Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, calling them "long, violent guitar jams, rambling over the nine-minute mark with no trace of virtuosity at all, just staccato guitar blasts sounding as though Young is parachuting down into the middle of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.