Neil Diamond: You Don't Bring Me Flowers : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Like Sylvester Stallone, Neil Diamond is an icon of the American Dream, wearing his street-toughened ego as a badge of artistic authenticity. No other pop singer capitalizes quite so heavily on the naked celebration of having Made It. If Diamond seemed garishly out of place in Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, the mere fact of his presence was a testament to his indomitable will to conquer.

But after well over a decade of making hits, Neil Diamond's craft remains elementary. His oratorical and elocutionary roar lacks any subtlety, while his forte is still the simple two- and three-chord ballad. What's apparent, however, is that Diamond, driven by a boundless belief in his ability to make universal "art" out of popular song, has always worked to his aesthetic capacity. An artist must avoid condescension in order to succeed the way Diamond has, or audiences will scent the falsity and flee. It's this combination of unreachable ambition and the utter confidence of its attainment that forms an essential ingredient of his appeal.

You Don't Bring Me Flowers, Diamond's latest proclamation of this confidence, is an ornate pop album, pure Las Vegas in spirit, with a hint of disco pulse in several cuts. Lavishly produced by Bob Gaudio, with quasi-symphonic orchestrations overlaying the propulsion of the nine-member "Neil Diamond Band," it's the least interesting of the singer's recent records. Except for the title tune. Rerecorded in the studio with Barbra Streisand, the now-famous duet in which Barbra and Neil play old married folks may be mere teary-eyed schmaltz, but it's also a sure-fire standard. And further proof that, at the very least, Neil Diamond possesses a melodic talent as unstoppable as it is primitive.