Neil Diamond has announced his third and final album collaboration with Rick Rubin, ‘Wild At Heart’, and shared the title track.
The veteran songwriter has found critical and commercial success with his previous records alongside Rubin – 2005’s ‘12 Songs’ and 2008’s ‘Home Before Dark’.
The songs that now make up ‘Wild At Heart’ were initially recorded during the ‘Home Before Dark’ sessions, and now Diamond has revisited the material, fleshing out nine new songs that will now be released for the first time, as well as an alternate take of ‘Home Before Dark’ track ‘Forgotten’.
The album will be released on CD, vinyl and digital platforms via Capitol/UMe on May 8, with limited edition coloured vinyl and 2CD versions also available. Pre-order your copy here.
Check out ‘Wild At Heart’, a lilting, country-flavoured track showing off Diamond’s time-tested vocals, here:
Diamond has said: “My work with Rick was a labor of love, and I’m so gratified that these songs will finally be set free into the world to complete our trilogy of work.”
The sessions that produced these tracks saw Diamond playing alongside keyboardist Benmont Tench and guitarist Mike Campbell, both of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, as well as guitarists Smokey Hormel and Matt Sweeney.
Over a five-decade career, Diamond has sold over 130million albums and has scored nearly 40 Top 40 singles, including the still-ubiquitous 1969 classic ‘Sweet Caroline’. The recent musical drama Song Sung Blue, starring Hugh Jackman and an Oscar-nominated Kate Hudson, was also based on a down-on-their-luck Neil Diamond tribute band.
Diamond was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2018 and retired from touring in the same year.
He briefly came out of retirement in 2022 to sing ‘Sweet Caroline’ during the curtain call of A Beautiful Noise, a Broadway musical about his life.
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