This is Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline at a fundraiser for his alma mater high school in Brooklyn. First off, mad respect. I have often wondered how Neil Diamond feels about Sweet Caroline being the de facto bad karaoke joint. The song is an ubiquitous punchline for describing a meatless song.
There don’t appear to be any guitars in it, just high school band style bass and horns. The lyrics are innocuous. It wouldn’t be out of place at Montessori. It’s grandpa music.
My guess was always, he’s completely fine with it. He wrote it that way on purpose. I don’t doubt he occasionally hits up a karaoke night wearing a fedora and fake beard and giggles his rich ass off. At least I’d like to think so.
My suspicions of this being a regular Wednesday evening for him were confirmed when I watched this video. He is performing, ostensibly, for high school kids. They are not huge fans of the 70’s singer-songwriter genre.
At best, their parents showed them a Youtube clip of Neil Diamond in the seventies and then they got really pissed for no reason and went to their rooms and masturbated for seven hours and then complained about breakfast.
Diamond is, in this performance, inhibiting a meta squared reality. He has two in-ear pieces, as if that’s necessary. Half the school’s secondary could belt this out just as well. He’s also not playing his guitar.
In other words, Neil Diamond is doing karaoke, to a Neil Diamond song, while being Neil Fucking Diamond.
Fuck The Matrix.
The only conclusion to draw from this is that Neil Diamond is an awesome dude, and, above all, a showman.
He could have had the lights dimmed and waltzed out with his tinted glasses on and done a heartfelt rendition of the song, which, I’d like to believe, he wrote in a moment of deep, deep passion while still dripping in pussy juice.
But, he didn’t. He appeased the audience.
Because he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
There’s a lot we could all learn from Neil Diamond.
Whatever you think about his music, he’s the ultimate guy you’d want to meet at the airport bar.