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Neil Diamond.
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Diamond, Neil (1941—)
In a career spanning four decades, Neil Leslie Diamond offered his listeners a collection of songs that were sometimes schmaltzy, sometimes openly patriotic, but always me...
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Critical Essay by William Bender
In the past three years, Diamond has turned out enough hit songs (among them: Kentucky Woman and Sweet Caroline) to keep the current champion, Burt Bacharach, watchful...
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Critical Essay by Melody Maker
["Love at the Greek"] is "Hot August Nights" part two (or to be more accurate, parts three and four, for this is another live double). The fo...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
Here's Neil Diamond, the Bard of the American middle class (the "feeling" part, that is), throwing his considerable box-office weight around in anot...
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Critical Essay by Ray Coleman
In the good old showbiz tradition of razzamatazz and "Give-us-a-song, Neil" atmosphere invoked by the theme and material of [the movie "The Jazz Sing...
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Critical Essay by Vicki Pipkin
[The movie "The Jazz Singer"] allows Diamond's strength in music to be used extensively, and that helps the sometimes corny musical drama….
[...
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Critical Essay by Jay Cocks
[Neil Diamond] has written and sung some of the smoothest and best contemporary pop, yet he remains a performer in search of a tradition, a megabucks pilgrim looking for ro...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Holden
Neil Diamond's quasi-classical melodies and oratorical vocals evoke a Hollywood Moses gesticulating wildly toward the heavens. This hasn't always been th...
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Critical Essay by Noel Coppage
There's an interesting contrast [in Heartlight] between how seriously Neil Diamond takes himself and how seriously the songs take anything. Collaborating mostly w...
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Critical Essay by Melody Maker
Besides "Cracklin' Rosie," [Neil Diamond's] hit single, "Tap Root Manuscript" contains what is presumably his magnum opus to da...
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Critical Essay by Alec Dubro
Diamond's latest album, Tap Root Manuscript, is a half step at being Artistic.
Side One is the usual—a couple of dynamite singles and a couple of not-so-hot ...
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Critical Essay by Roy Hollingworth
[Neil Diamond's songs during a 1972 concert on Broadway] are pretty, and poppy, and in the way he delivers them—melancholic, and ultra-romantic…...
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Critical Essay by Paul Kresh
The best thing about [the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull] … is Neil Diamond's score, and the Columbia recording of the original soundtrack … is thu...
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Critical Essay by Tom Nolan
"I've seen the light," the first song [on Serenade] begins, and Neil Diamond reads his line with the slovenly confidence of an illuminated saloon singe...
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Critical Essay by Bob Kirsch
["Beautiful Noise"] is one of the most satisfying and commercially viable albums Diamond has come up with in years, an energetic "up" set that ...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Holden
In Beautiful Noise, Neil Diamond recollects his days as a scuffling young Tin Pan Alley writer. Though the songs are better crafted than those on Serenade, there remai...
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Critical Essay by Joe Goldberg
Both in conception and delivery, Diamond tends toward melodrama. The spiritual progenitor of some of his most effective numbers, like "I Am … I Said,...
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