Friday, May 7, 2021

Various Artists - Covered: Neil Diamond, Volume 2: 1970-2019

While I'm at it, here's the second of two of my "Covered" series albums for Neil Diamond.

As I explained with the first volume, I music prefer the poppy music from early in Diamond's career, when he did songs like "I'm a Believer" and "Cherry, Cherry," to his later focus on cheesy ballads like "Don't Bring Me Flowers" and "Heartlight." So you won't find covers of either of those latter two hits here, or some others like them. In some cases, I did pick some of his more mellow songs, but I generally went with rocking versions.

If there's any classic song you feel was unjustly left off this album and Volume 1, please let me know. But hopefully also let me know of a good cover version of that song. If you do, I will strongly consider adding it in. 

All the songs here have been officially released, except for the Gladys Knight version of "Love on the Rocks." I like that song and wanted to include it, but I had a hard time finding a version that wasn't overproduced and cheesy. I found a YouTube video of Knight doing the song for a TV show, and converted it to mp3. The Elvis Presley version of "Sweet Caroline" is from a concert album, but I minimized the audience noise to help it fit in with the other studio tracks.

This album is 44 minutes long. Volume 1 is just a little bit longer.

01 Sweet Caroline (Elvis Presley)
02 Song Sung Blue (Vikki Carr)
03 Play Me (Harry Belafonte)
04 I Am... I Said (Bunny Scott)
05 Sunflower (Glen Campbell)
06 Forever in Blue Jeans (Tommy Overstreet)
07 Love on the Rocks (Gladys Knight)
08 Red, Red Wine (UB40)
09 Solitary Man (Chris Isaak)
10 Cracklin' Rosie (Shane MacGowan & the Popes)
11 Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon (Urge Overkill)
12 America (Me First & the Gimme Gimmes)
13 Hello Again (Fun Lovin' Criminals)

https://www.imagenetz.de/kcJrK

The cover art photo dates to 1979.

5 comments:

  1. Wheres Robert Wyatt's cover of I'm A Believer?

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    1. One of my rules is to only have one version of each song. I figure the Monkees version is the definitive one, since it was first and sold a zillion copies. But if there's a critical mass of people who feel I should add the Robert Wyatt version too, I suppose I could do that.

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  2. Replies
    1. Still alive, thanks for asking. I've been unexpectedly busy with other things. Hopefully that's easing up now.

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