Songoftheday 8/17/12 - 'Cuz sometimes the world ain't kind, when people get lost like you & me...

Neil Diamond - "Heartlight"
from the album Heartlight (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (four weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by the hugely successful Brooklyn-born singer/songwriter Neil Diamond, who some fans adoringly refer to as "The Jewish Elvis". Neil started out as a songwriter in the legendary Tin Pan Alley in the mid-sixties, where songs of his became hits for groups like the Monkees and Jay & The Americans. Signed to Bang records in 1966, his debut album, The Feel of Neil Diamond was released that same year. The first single from that record, "Solitary Man", was his first minor chart hit in the US, and its followup, "Cherry, Cherry", did even better, making the top-10 on the pop chart.

After switching from Bang to Uni (MCA) at the end of the decade, Neil scored his first top-5 hit with his classic "Sweet Caroline (Good Times Never Felt So Good)" in 1969, from his second album for the label, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show. The following year, on his sixth record, Tap Root Manuscript, he delved into world music and African-American folk and in return the second single "Cracklin' Rosie" gave Neil his first US #1 hit, as well as his biggest British charting song at #3. "Song Song Blue", from his 1972 LP Moods, gave him another charttopper as he was also nominated for the Song and Record of the Year Grammys. They would make up for him losing with his Grammy win the next year for his soundtrack to the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

After another label switch to Columbia Records, Diamond claimed another #1 single in 1978 when his solo track "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" was mixed with label-mate Barbra Streisand's version  by a Kentucky radio program director, and the resulting nascent viral demand for the pairing caused them to record a proper duet of the song.

Neil started the 80s by starring in the remake of the classic movie The Jazz Singer, which scored him another three top-10 pop hits. The following album On The Way To The Sky, however, failed to have any such hits, though still producing three top-40 singles, including the spring's "Be Mine Tonight", and all of them were still ruling the adult-contemporary radio chart. His next album, Heartlight, would be titled after its first single, which was inspired (and possibly have hoped to have been a theme song to a sequel of, perhaps?) the Steven Spielberg movie E.T. Produced by Diamond himself and co-written with the formidable songwriting pair of Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, "Heartlight", piggybacking on the success or not, returned him to the top-10 on the pop chart. In return, they had to pay Spielberg $25,000 to crib from the plot of the movie.

"Heartlight" also topped the adult-contemporary (soft-rock) chart for four weeks, his eighth and final song to do so (so far). The album as well was a top-10 success, though in Britain both the single and the album missed the top-40 (peaking in the forties).

Up Tomorrow: A winner of an Grammy, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe, that almost didn't make the film it was in.