Neil Diamond’s uncanny gift lies in his ability to sing about the bleakest of emotions without ever sounding the slightest bit sad. He first ascended to the #1 spot on the charts with the infectious drinking anthem “Cracklin’ Rosie.” The story fueling that song is tragic: somewhere in the cold expanse of northern Canada, a native tribe faced a heartbreaking imbalance of the sexes, leaving many men isolated, turning their loneliness into companionship with bottles of wine. That bleak reality might have been tragic in any other hands but Diamond transformed it into a celebration drenched in razzle-dazzle — a signature move for the man who could command euphoric energy even while telling a somber tale.**
Following this, Diamond’s second #1 solo single and his last to hold that place outright, “Song Sung Blue,” carried on this curious thread. It’s simultaneously a song about songs and depression. At its core lies a straightforward truth: when we sing about sadness, we’re channeling that pain and somehow lifting ourselves out of the blues. Yet, the paradox is that “Song Sung Blue” isn’t a sad song at all. Diamond croons,
Funny thing, but you can sing it with a cry in your voice, / And before you know it, get to feeling good / You simply got no choice.
Oddly, there’s not a trace of sorrow in his voice—just the warm, Broadway-ready glow that cemented his stardom. Is he enchanted by music’s healing power? Perhaps he’s joyfully telling us that we don’t have to drown in sadness; a simple song can cure what ails us. After all, he’s not lamenting his own gloom—he’s celebrating the very act of singing sad songs. This tension between content and delivery imbues the track with a strange yet delightful detachment, so much so that Diamond himself described it live as “a glad song” rather than a sad one.
Interestingly, Diamond crafted the vocal melody for “Song Sung Blue” inspired by the second movement of a Mozart concerto, melding classical grace with pop accessibility. The arrangement, under Diamond and producer Tom Catalano, is deceptively simple: a lazy guitar strum paired with the glowing warmth of a Fender Rhodes keyboard. Every detail — from the melodramatic strings to the wistful backing vocals and plaintive harmonica — strikes at just the right moment, forming a puzzle with no hurry or pulse but with undeniable cohesion. It stands as a fine exemplar of crafted commercial polish, meaningful in presentation if not in lyrical complexity.
Diamond, however, was famously indifferent about the song, admitting he “never paid too much attention” and calling it a “very basic message, unadorned.” Even the lack of a bridge didn’t bother him. But Russ Regan, head of Diamond’s Uni label, heard the hit lurking beneath the simple surface, and sure enough, the song skyrocketed, proving once again the elusive magic behind Neil Diamond’s art.
Lyrics capture the bittersweet simplicity:
Song sung blue / Everybody knows one / Song sung blue / Every garden grows one / Me and you are subject to the blues now and then / But when you take the blues and make a song / You sing them out again…
This unassuming masterpiece continues to resonate, a paradoxical anthem that turns the very concept of sad singing upside down, ensuring that even in the darkest tones, music’s light shines through.
