Neil Diamond

I have no shame. Nor credibility.

I'm too old to care. The days when I appropriated unknown (still) acts like Patrik Fitzgerald and dalek i love you and crayoned them lovingly on my rucksack are long behind me. Indeed, whole decades of music have sidled past me when I wasn't looking.

But my love of Neil Diamond has withstood the vagaries of fashion and time. This sort of affection is often called a "guilty pleasure". This is, of course, a phrase cultural snobs use to allow themselves to listen to, watch and read things they secretly prefer to the things they openly laud. But I feel no need to admit such guilt.

'Love at the Greek' is the best live album ever made. Period. I won't bore you with any further catalogue of the man's greatness - the slew of hits he's written for other people; the way his lyrics modulate from the sublime to the ridiculous within the same chorus; the effortless and unembarrassed lack of cool stretching the history of popular music - instead I'll talk about his latest hit.

Currently you may have noticed supermarkets, soft radio stations, garage forecourts, hotel bars everywhere are playing his version of 'Midnight Train to Georgia' on perpetual loop. Now, this song, as done by Gladys Knight, is without question in my top 10 of all-time songs. A desert island choice for sure.

What Neil has done to this song, and as a 98 year old to boot, is take all the forward motion, all the funk, all the soul, all the swooping emotion of the vocals, all the gloriously camp backing of the Pips ("Superstar, but he didn't get far"), he's managed to take all that greatness, and discard it in favour of the slow, turgid, monochrome of a dying man's croak.

And it's really good.

Genius, folks, genius...


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