Mid-70s AOR staple Neil Diamond often sings with a ferret in his pants.

I personally never cared for the trite rock stuff that he cluttered his albums with for years, apparently the stuff that most Neil Diamond fans my age flock towards if they have any inclination to listen to him. Sadly, "classics" like "Cherry Cherry" and "Solitary Man" don't do anything for me. In fact, I find them almost intolerably bad. I don't want others to suffer through that drivel in their attempts to penetrate the extensive (and often painfully bad) Neil Diamond catalog. That's why this page is here. You want to get past all that bad rock stuff to his forte, the love song.

I am an unabashed fan of Neil's balladry. In fact, I think in many ways, his songwriting in the normally loathesome love song department is essentially unrivaled. No one has made so many strides in composing understated love songs bolstered by sweet orchestral strings and littered with subtly lustful lyrics that are simultaneously innocuous and borderline obscene. And I mean all that in a good way despite the fact that the description might remind you of those shitty "Summer Night" compilations that sometimes get advertised on TV and are filled with nauseating love songs by guys like Peabo Bryson and James Taylor.

Neil's ballads are the kind of thing you listen to when you're feeling inextricably depressed, like when your longtime girlfriend/boyfriend leaves you and you feel like wallowing in your eternal misery. These songs have this unique ability to make you feel like shit and cheer you up at the same time. Call me old fashioned, but I like the original version of "Red Red Wine" better than the famous version; it actually sounds bleak and hopeless, like it's supposed to, unlike UB40's version which conjures images of lying on a beach flanked by shirtless frat boys chugging 24 packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

"Shilo" is a fanciful ode to a dead dog or perhaps some kind of friendly ghost, I'm not sure-- but it's a good example of Diamond's ability to exploit polar contrasts effortlessly; the subject matter is patently sad, but somehow he emerges from the orchestral explosions with an exhilerating chorus that sends shivers down your spine. I can recall on one occasion where I was talking to a friend about Neil Diamond and I was detailing the depressing nature of his songs, and she was quite taken aback by this description. "Are we talking about the same Neil Diamond?" she asked, confused. "I thought he was supposed to be uplifting!"

Yeah, he's uplifting-- if by "uplifting" you mean that he sings in upbeat tones about how he has complete faith that his crippling depression can be solved with a spate of cheap wines. Yeah, it's funny like that.

Anyway, these 10 tracks will be a good introduction into his oevre, but I must warn you that it may lead you into more questionable material, which you may or may not want to subject yourself to, depending on your threshold of pain. Hmmm, where to begin? Well, there's the awful anti-drug tirade "The Pot Smoker's Song", which is a nutty singalong where Neil voices his disdain for marijuana and its users with a disparaging but catchy chorus ("pot, pot / gimme some pot / forget who you are / you can be who you're not"). It also features voice-overs of former drug-abusers, one of which claims to inject heroin into his spine. Yeah. Right. There's the remarkably bad karaoke staple "Done too Soon" which is a laundry list of notable figures in history who have died at a young age. It's so abominable, it must be heard to be believed. I've never been able to listen for more than 30 seconds, it's so terrible. It also reminds me of "We Didn't Start the Fire," which is definitely not a check in its favor. And finally, there's "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore," a seedy duet with Barbra Streisand, that chronicles the downward descent of a relationship. It's a bitterly gloomy track that just begs to be played on some radio station whose demographic is middle aged women with soft spots for emotional break-up songs. You know, the kind of radio station you hear at your dentist's office.

To contrast this, each song in this top 10 list is beautiful, stunning, and nearly perfect, save for the occasional set of awkward lyrics ("I am, I said / to no one there / and no one heard at all / not even the chair"), which are endearing enough to be an asset to the flawless music.

Some might quibble with my omissions, like "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon," "Holly Holy," and "I'm a Believer" (famously covered by the Monkees) but I don't believe that those belong in the top 10 despite being some of his more popular tunes. Sure, I'd put them in the top 20, but the top 10 is reserved for prime cuts, baby. PRIME CUTS!! YOU HEAR?!

For those of you hearing these songs for the first time, I envy you. I hope you enjoy the songs as much as I do.