For Landing on Water, Young employed producer Danny Kortchmar, engineer Niko Bolas and studio drummer Steve Jordan.

Young and the band would attempt additional sessions at The Power Station in New York with David Briggs as producer, but again were unsuccessful at completing an album.

In a 1990 Rolling Stone interview with James Henke, Young explains: "We went to New York and tried to record these songs for three weeks, and we didn’t get one track.

This time, Young would hire producer Danny Kortchmar, who had recently seen success with Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast.

Young, Kortchmar and studio drummer Steve Jordan play all the instruments on the album, including Synclavier, synth bass and other synthesizers.

Kortchmar recalled his experiences making the album in a 2019 interview with Dale Kawashima: "He had heard the stuff I was doing with Don Henley, and he was intrigued by the idea of using more electronics.

[6] The lyrics of several of the songs reflect the personal pressure Young was facing from his record company and the need to care for his family at the time.

In "Weight of the World," he praises his relationship for helping him rise above his challenges, while in "Drifter," he reexamines the benefits of partnership and whether he'd prefer to escape his troubles instead.

"Violent Side" was one of the first songs written for the album, from the period when Young's relationship with Geffen was at a nadir and he was struggling to prioritize both his family's needs and his waning rock career.

In the early 1980s, Crosby had an ongoing addiction to freebase cocaine and started carrying a gun in paranoia after the assassination of John Lennon.

Archivist Joel Bernstein and mutual friend of both artists who had attempted to help Crosby with his addictions stated for Shakey "I got chills when I heard it.

In Shakey, Young describes dealing with a lawsuit stemming from the production of his movie Human Highway plus his struggles with Geffen while trying to maintain his flailing rock music career and tending to his family needs.

"Drifter" appears to echo some of the sentiments of Young's previous songs "The Loner" and "Sail Away," and the feeling of release that comes with being able to escape one's situation and shift gears to a new setting.

Young addresses these themes in a 1990 interview with Vox's Nick Kent: I think I’ve just had an uncanny ability to escape.

They just pop into my head, these songs and ideas, while I'm driving along, and when I get home I move over to the typewriter, and sometimes what comes out is good and sometimes it isn't; but it never stops.

[11][2] The album cover shows an excerpt of an airplane seat pocket guide with instructions on how to evacuate the plane in event of an emergency landing on a body of water.

The cover represents an apparent criticism of Geffen's efforts to encourage Young to produce an album that caters to commercial tastes rather than his artistic motives.

"[6] In a 1994 interview with Spin's Greil Marcus, Young further explains: "The cover and the title of that album, it’s directions on how to survive an insurvivable thing: how to land on water, in a jet that’s crashing.

"[12]Young had plans to make a longform video directed by British film director Tim Pope, featuring each of the ten songs on the album.

In "Touch the Night", which was shot in a single continuous take, he played a local TV news reporter at the scene of an accident.

In "Weight of the World" he wears a wig, moustache and business suit at a pool party; in "People on the Street" he plays a tap dancer who battles dog poop.

For "Pressure," he plays a nerdy father driving a family on vacation who hits himself on the head repeatedly; during filming Young managed to knock himself out cold.

"Violent Side" would have featured the artist as a loner who wanders into a nuclear testing site causing a transformation into the Lone Ranger.

In an April 18, 2022 article posted to Neil Young's website, engineer and producer Niko Bolas describes the process of making a new transfer from the original analog master tapes.

As a result, Bolas and engineer John Hausmann tracked down the master tapes and made a new transfer with significantly improved sound quality and clarity.

In October, Henley, backed by Kortchmar, would perform an acoustic set at the first Bridge School Benefit concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.

[21] People gave less charitable assessments of the album: "In this dismal piece of self-flagellation, when you come to the track about a highway accident, you've found the upbeat stuff.

His titles suggest his one-note mood: "Hard Luck Stories", "I Got a Problem", "Violent Side", "Pressure", "Weight of the World" and "Bad News Beat".

Stereogum ranked the album as one of Young's worst, describing the production as a "digital mess" and charitably concedes that at least it isn't a total fiasco.

"[28] In a 1988 interview with James Henke for Rolling Stone, he takes a more charitable view: "That album was like a rebirth, just me coming back to L.A. after having been secluded for so long.