ALBUM: Neil Diamond, ‘Melody Road’
Neil Diamond is one of those musicians that elicits strong, polarizing opinions — either you love the guy, or you still blame him for ruining The Last Waltz just because he showed up.
As someone who isn’t shy about sporting the Diamond Girl badge, I’ll admit that in recent years it hasn’t been easy being a Neil Diamond fan. His last collection of original songs, 2008’s Home Before Dark, was received well enough by critics but too sleep-inducing for my taste. Since that creative effort it seems Diamond has been churning out the same material but in different packaging — a Christmas album, a live concert recording, and a cover album of his favorite songs by other artists. Where was the Diamond I grew up on and loved who was known for charming us with infectious ear worms such as “Song Sung Blue,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” and “Forever in Blue Jeans”?
Fortunately, he’s back loud and strong with Melody Road. Throughout the album, I kept catching glimpses of his infamous hits from the 1960s and 1970s: similar note progression here, a familiar chord change there. By the end of it, when I realized some of the songs were already replaying themselves in my grey matter, I knew he had a winner on his resume again. “Melody Road” was produced by the legendary Don Was and is Diamond’s first album with Capitol Records after being signed to Columbia for 40 years; maybe the change (in addition to a new marriage) was just what he needed to get that song catalog spiffed up.
The title track which opens and closes the album pretty much sums up the career path Diamond’s been on for nearly a half decade. The lyrics Melody road I’m on with you / All the way to the end / I know every song you lead me to / It’s gonna be my friend speak to his fans’ fondness for his tunes as well. Some of his songs have become our familiar friends, so to speak, through the years, with their warm rhymes and memorable choruses. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Melody Road introduces us to some new ones.
From there, Diamond launches into one of my favorite songs on the album, the energetic “First Time.” Although it’s meant to describe a young person’s exhilaration of striking out on his own, I also felt that Diamond was speaking about his own story of success: Still remember the first word you wrote / And every single note that you’ve played / Got a book and you learned it by rote / Long time ago, remember that day? It isn’t surprising that he should be feeling nostalgic these days — 2015 will mark the 50th anniversary of Diamond’s first success as a songwriter, and in September he played a show at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, NY, his alma matter.
Of course, there’s no shortage of love songs among the new material. Diamond married his manager, Katie McNeil, in 2012 and judging by romantic tracks such as “The Art of Love,” “Marry Me Now,” and “(Ooo) Do I Wanna Be Yours,” the honeymoon is still rubbing off on his songwriting. The catchiest would have to be “Something Blue,” which also seems like the one most likely to get pitched for radio play, considering the official video was the first I saw promoting the album. Speaking of the video, even if you don’t like the song, you’d have to be a soulless cretin to dislike footage of Diamond cuddling puppies in the stunning part of Colorado he makes his home. All of the dogs used in the video came from a nearby shelter after his wife saw a photo of them, and she and Diamond ended up adopting two of them.
Another strong track is “Seongah and Jimmy.” It’s an epic aria that tells a love story in quintessential Diamond fashion: punctuated by a rousing orchestral arrangement and somewhat ponderous lyrics (the title is repeated ten times) but you can’t help but love it for its simple message that sometimes good things really happen to good people. Although it sounds like an anonymous love story updated to reflect modern society’s ethnic diversity — Caucasian boy meets Korean girl in the big city, they fall in love, learn from one another, and marry — it’s actually the most personal song on the album. Diamond wrote it for his brother-in-law Jimmy and his Korean-born wife, Seongah, and performed it at their wedding. I can’t help but think that had this been recorded and released during the 1980s that it would have become a requirement for every tour set list.
Then there’s the haunting ballads “Nothing But A Heartache” and “Alone At the Ball,” which provide some contrast against the bouncier tone of the album; each invoking the lonely angst of “I Am, I Said.”
In a 2012 interview with Parade, Diamond hinted that he was working on this album, but warned fans that he wouldn’t be writing anything too philosophical. “I don’t feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless,” he told the magazine. True, but the album that became Melody Road clearly did evolve to provide that balance of emotions we’ve come to experience through Diamond’s songs through the years. Overall, Melody Road is sure to satisfy longtime Diamond fans. He may have retired the sequin jumpsuits years ago, but the Diamond still shines.
