Neil Diamond remembers a very clear difference when he shifted from being a songwriter to a recording artist with his debut album, The Feel of Neil Diamond, which came out 60 years ago this month.
“There was a lapel button that said, ‘I love The Feel of Neil Diamond,’ and marketing around the album,” Diamond says in an email interview. “You don’t get that when you’re just a songwriter and other people are singing your songs! It was a new era.”
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That 1966 debut album on Bang Records — with its hits “Solitary Man” and “Cherry Cherry” — set Diamond on his way as one of not only the most successful singer-songwriters in pop music history but one of the most beloved. With hits like “Holly Holy,” “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “I Am… I Said,” “Song Sung Blue,” “Forever in Blue Jeans,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” “America” and, of course, the cultural juggernaut “Sweet Caroline,” Diamond has charted 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including 13 top 10s, and 18 top 10 albums on the Billboard 200. He is No. 2 on Billboard’s Greatest Adult Contemporary Artists of All Time list, behind only Elton John. He has sold more than 130 million albums, according to Universal Music Group, which acquired his song catalog and master recordings in 2022.
Not bad for someone who never planned to perform his own songs. In the early to mid-1960s, the Brooklyn-born Diamond was writing in the Brill Building, the revered New York home to such legendary writers as Ellie Greenwich, Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
“Working in the Brill Building, I had a thrilling sense of belonging and I was impressed by the people who inhabited the building,” Diamond says. “I didn’t have any premeditation of being a new star. I was making a living.”
“Making a living” turned into a career in which he conquered the world with his songs, earned induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame and received both a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kennedy Center Honor.
After being a global touring sensation for more than 50 years, in 2018 Diamond announced he was no longer touring after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
However, new fans continue to discover his music. In 2022, A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, the moving musical about his life and career, opened on Broadway. After more than 650 performances, it is now playing around the globe, including opening in Australia this month. The 2025 movie Song Sung Blue about Diamond tribute band Lightning & Thunder starring Hugh Jackman and an Academy Award-nominated Kate Hudson further introduced a younger audience to his songs.
And there is still music in the vault to enjoy. In May, Capitol/UME released Wild at Heart, the third in Diamond’s renowned series of albums recorded with producer Rick Rubin in 2007 that were fleshed out recently by Diamond as he returned to the material.
Diamond, 85, revisited his storied career with Billboard and many of his milestones. What stands out is his belief in the power of a good song and what it means for both the writer and the listener and the shared communion between the two. But as he tells it, it all started with a certain baseball team moving out of New York.
Part of your origin story is that your parents gave you guitar lessons to cheer you up after being so bereft over the Brooklyn Dodgers leaving New York in 1957. What would have happened if the team hadn’t left and you hadn’t picked up the guitar?
When the Dodgers left Brooklyn immediately after finally winning the pennant, I was devastated, along with the rest of the loyal Brooklyn Dodgers fans. Guitar lessons were a small consolation but led to big things. Was it worth losing the Brooklyn Dodgers because it led to guitar lessons, which grew into a lifelong career and success? I don’t know. Who knows where I’d be if that didn’t happen, but I think my path would have still led me to music. It was always inside me and needed to get out. The guitar lessons helped.
In the ’60s, you were a songwriter in the legendary Brill Building in New York. What was that like?
At the Brill Building, I had a newfound connection with other songwriters and professionals. There was a feeling of achievement when I made it to the Brill Building. Before that, I had a little office nearby on Broadway. There was a pay phone in there, and I had pictures on the wall of popular singers that I faked their autographs on to make it look like they were signed to me, so I looked more successful. The walls were thin and I could hear other people’s music through the walls. I had a piano in my office, [though] it wasn’t really an office, it was more like a utility closet. Despite having a piano in my “office,” [people] called me “The Cowboy” because I was one of the few songwriters there writing on guitar.
You planned to be a songwriter only. Would you have been as happy if you had remained a songwriter and not gone on to become a performer?
I would have been perfectly happy being a songwriter forever if I never got a taste of what it was actually like to perform. Once I started doing live shows, the energy and connection with the audiences left me wanting more. More shows meant more songs, and so the cycle began.
How did your debut single, “Solitary Man,” reaching No. 55 on the Hot 100 in 1966 shift the trajectory of your career?
“Solitary Man” was a defining moment in my career because I hadn’t expected it.
You’ve written so many songs that are now part of the soundtrack of people’s lives. What makes a good song, and what separates the ones you kept from the ones you threw away?
I didn’t throw away songs. I tried to accept them each for their attributes and see where they would take me. I don’t know exactly what makes a good song; for me, it just had to feel right. The feel of it. “The feel of Neil Diamond.”
But the recording process has certain elements that you might not expect. Many times, I’ve gone into a studio with a song that I didn’t feel quite right about or didn’t love, and that’s part of the test of truthfulness that every writer and every initiator of a song feels because the writer has to have the thought that this song is special and will stand the test of listening. Then the weaning process in the studio, the créme de la créme of the songs would come to the fore: What was the attraction to the song or a particular arrangement that put it into a different realm?
From left: Diamond, songwriter Ellie Greenwich, songwriter-producer Bert Berns and songwriter Jeff Barry circa 1966. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Imag“Sweet Caroline” is sung the world over at sporting events, weddings, etc. Why did it become such a worldwide anthem for good times? What kind of joy does that give you as a songwriter to know you penned a song that brings people around the globe so much happiness?
I always felt that “Sweet Caroline” came through me and not from me. I just sort of channeled that song after I had the inspiration [from feeling the] pressure of desperately needing a song for a recording session. Once it was released to the world and embraced by so many people as an anthem of happiness, unity, joy and togetherness, I felt that it no longer was my song. It belonged to the world. It’s kind of amazing the life it’s taken on.
You recorded your landmark double live album, Hot August Night, 54 years ago, and it set the standard for live recordings. What is your strongest memory of those 10 sold-out shows at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles?
I was sick for those shows, but it didn’t dim my enthusiasm. I thought the cold I had would come and go in a week, but the recording would be heard for years, and it still is. I have many memories of those 10 shows, each one lasted two or more hours and it wasn’t the same every night. I could tell it was special when I was doing it. One of my biggest regrets is that we didn’t film those shows.
Do you look at yourself more as a singer-songwriter or as an entertainer?
Both. There’s no entertainer without songs. The songs come first. The songwriter is most important. The songs carry the singer. Once you have those, you can entertain. Perform. That’s the easy part. Songwriting is the hardest.
A Beautiful Noise debuts in Melbourne, Australia, in August. How has the musical introduced you to a new, younger audience?
I know at my shows, whole families would go: grandparents, their kids and grandchildren all together. The musical is the same. I’m told the audiences are multigenerational.
What is your favorite album of yours and why?
Hot August Night. It was such a magical live experience and was captured so beautifully. It was like capturing magic in a bottle — a beautiful, vinyl bottle.
What is your favorite song of yours and why?
It’s hard to choose a favorite. They all ring a little bell inside me that has made them stand out and shine. They’re all my creations. But I think “I Am… I Said” is one that stands out. That’s a tough song. It was tough to write and perform because it’s like an open wound and it refuses to succumb. It’s almost an exotic song because it goes to places that I never would have discussed. I could never go there until I finally opened up. There was difficulty in putting it out there, but it was very cleansing. It was painful at times to perform it. It doesn’t let me off the hook. It doesn’t say what I want to say in a way that excuses me. It’s my most vulnerable song.
When people talk about you 50 years from now, what do you hope they’re talking about?
I hope my songs still resonate with people.
This story appears in the Aug. 1, 2026, issue of Billboard.