What a beautiful noise!

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

18/12/20 : Classic Diamonds - Neil Diamond With The LSO




Neil Diamond's an interesting one - he's been around for years, but I think I'd struggle to name more than a couple of songs he's done.  I wonder if that's about to change with the second "let's piss about with classic songs by adding in an orchestra" album I've met on the list - and let's hope it's better than the previous one.

And yes, it is.  Adding the orchestra in here does make a difference and certainly doesn't ruin the songs (that I recognise, anyway) and "Beautiful Noise" is a very strong album opener which has a lovely lush feeling to it.  However, some of the songs have been ruined by the arrangement - particularly "I'm A Believer" and "Sweet Caroline" which they inexplicably decided to slow right down.  Unforgiveable, I tell you.

For a change, we're at #2 in the charts this week - and he wasn't even a new entry either, with this being his fourth week on the charts out of a run of twelve.  Taylor was #1 and the highest new entry - the next highest new entry was Kid Cudi at #26.  It's a bloody awful top 10 though - but that's Xmas for you, I guess...

Wikipedia has nothing on the album - although his entry tells us it did surprisingly badly in the US (#137) compared to his other albums.  It's either the presence of some Brits on it or they heard what he'd done to "I'm A Believer".  The man is still rocking at 81 though - he is apparently "the only artist to score a top 20 hit in each decade since the creation of Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. In a career spanning five decades" (whatever the Adult Contemporary chart is).

"Customers also listened to" Elkie Brooks, The Walker Brothers and Barbara DIxon - which seems like an odd mix.  Overall, whilst I wouldn't have chosen to listen to this, I didn't mind the idea behind the album and thought it was generally done well - but they way they massacred some of his better known tracks is simply bizarre.

11/12/20 - An interesting album
25/12/20 - A surprising "almost like"

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