Its success marked the moment that Diamond shifted from pop/rock stardom to being seen as one of the kings of adult contemporary.
Close-up of American musician and actor Neil Diamond prior to his one man show at the Winter Garden, New York, New York, October 1972.
Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
With the film Song Sung Blue due for release on Christmas Day, here’s a quick refresher course on Neil Diamond’s loping, midtempo ballad of the same name which became a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972.
The song discusses (and demonstrates) the power of music to improve your mood. It walks the same fine line between happy and sad as Elton John’s 1984 hit “Sad Songs (Say So Much).” Diamond co-produced the smash with Tom Catalano, who would produce another Hot 100 No. 1 hit the following year for Helen Reddy, “Delta Dawn.”
“Song Sung Blue” has an easygoing, amiable approach that echoes such 1940s hits as Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star.” It has little of the dynamics and crackling tension of such earlier Diamond hits as “Cherry, Cherry,” “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” and “Cracklin’ Rosie.” You can make a good case that its success marked the moment that Diamond shifted from pop/rock stardom to being seen as one of the kings of adult contemporary.
Song Sung Blue is a narrative feature adaptation of Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name. The film stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as Milwaukee couple Mike and Claire Sardina, struggling musicians who become local stars performing as the Neil Diamond tribute band Lightning & Thunder. (He’s Lightning; she’s Thunder.) Because of Hudson’s previous success with rom-coms, you might think this is that kind of film. It isn’t: It’s surprisingly dramatic. Hudson received a Golden Globe nomination last week for her impressive performance.
Here are six things to know about Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue.”
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The song was inspired by Mozart.
“Song Sung Blue” was inspired by the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto #21. It was based on a theme from the andante movement of the concerto, which was composed in 1785.
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It was Diamond’s second of three No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.
It reached No. 1 in July 1972, displacing Sammy Davis Jr.’s three-week leader “The Candy Man.” Diamond had first topped the chart with “Cracklin’ Rosie” in October 1970. He went on to reach the summit on the chart for a third time in December 1978 with “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” a collab with Barbra Streisand.
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It was his first of eight No. 1 Adult Contemporary hits.
“Song Sung Blue” was Diamond’s first No. 1 onBillboard’s Easy Listening chart (now Adult Contemporary). He had previously reached No. 2 with three hits, “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “I Am… I Said” and “Stones.” “Song Sung Blue” remained No. 1 for seven weeks, longer than any other Diamond hit. It was one of just two songs from the first half of the 1970s to top the chart for seven weeks, along with Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun.”
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It brought Diamond his first Grammy nods for record and song of the year.
The song brought Diamond his first Grammy nominations for record and song of the year. At the 1973 ceremony, he lost in both categories to “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” recorded in 1969 by Roberta Flack and written in 1957 by Ewan McColl. (It was eligible at the 1973 ceremony because Flack’s single was released for the first time in the wake of its featured placement in Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood’s first film as a director.)
Diamond was nominated for record and song of the year a second time for “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” which he co-wrote with Alan & Marilyn Bergman. The song was nominated at the 1979 ceremony; the record at the 1980 ceremony.
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The song’s success surprised Diamond.
In his 1996 box set In My Lifetime, Diamond expressed surprise that the song became one of his biggest hits. “This is one to which I never paid too much attention,” he wrote. “A very basic message, unadorned. I didn’t even write a bridge to it. I never expected anyone to react to ‘Song Sung Blue’ the way they did. I just liked it, the message and the way a few words said so many things. I recorded the song strictly for that reason. I had no idea that it would become a huge hit or that people would want to sing along with it.”
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Frank Sinatra covered the song on his 1980 album Trilogy.
Such traditional pop singers as Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams covered “Song Sung Blue” on 1972 albums. Eight years later, the greatest of them all, Frank Sinatra, covered the song on his triple-disk album, Trilogy: Past Present Future.
It appeared on the “Present” disk, along with such other fairly recent hits as Ray Price’s “For the Good Times,” Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” and “Theme From New York, New York,” which was introduced by Liza Minnelli in the film of the same name.
