Neil Diamond Originally Wrote This Song for a Norman Lear TV Sitcom Before Recording It With Barbra Streisand and Hitting No. 1

During a dinner party one evening at Norman Lear’s home during the late 1970s, Neil Diamond asked the television producer if he was working on anything new. At the time, Lear was about to start on a new sitcom, All That Glitters, centered around a world where the gender roles were reversed, and women were the stronger sex.

Diamond offered to write a song, and Lear suggested writing with songwriting duo Alan and Marilyn Bergman. “The premise of the show was that the roles of men and women were juxtaposed: the men stayed home with the babies and did the housework, and the women went out to work,” Diamond told Mojo. “It presaged the way the situation is now. I suggested trying to write a torch song, which is typically a woman singing on-stage about how her man done her wrong, but having sung by a man, therefore the title ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,’ which is not something that men really think about, but a woman might.”

Between the time the song was written and the pilot for the sitcom was filmed, the premise of the show shifted, and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” was no longer fit. Though shelved, Diamond started playing the song live to some great reception.

“So we scrapped it, and about six or eight months later, we ran into Neil, and he said that he was doing the song on the road and that everybody liked it,” recalled Marilyn Bergman. “We said, ‘What song? It’s 45 seconds long!’ He said, ‘Well, I do a little instrumental part, then I come back,’ and we decided to finish the song, and he recorded it.”

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The Mashup That Brought in Barbra Streisand

After completing the song with the Bergmans, Diamond released it on his 1977 album, I’m Glad You’re Here with Me Tonight. Soon after its release, Diamond’s former high school classmate, Barbra Streisand, heard the song and recorded it for her 1978 album Songbird.

With both versions out, Gary Guthrie, program director at WAKY-AM in Louisville, Kentucky, recalled hearing Diamond’s version with his soon-to-be ex-wife, who cried listening to the lyrics. As a parting gift to her, Guthrie mashed up Diamond and Streisand, and other DJs followed with more remixes. The popularity of the radio play prompted Columbia Records to bring Diamond and Streisand together to officially cut the song.

The Diamond and Streisand duet of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” transformed the original into a heartfelt ballad on a withering love.

You don’t bring me flowers
You don’t sing me love songs
You hardly talk to me anymore
When you come through the door
At the end of the day

I remember when
You couldn’t wait to love me
Used to hate to leave me
Now after lovin’ me late at night
When it’s good for you, babe
And you’re feeling alright
Well, you just roll over
And you turn out the light
And you don’t bring me flowers anymore

“It was the two of us with a piano, and we sang it, and they put the strings on it later,” recalled Diamond. “And just—I think two or three takes. And, you know, it was easy. I mean, she’s, you know, probably the greatest female singer of my generation.

Once released, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two consecutive weeks and picked up two Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo. Diamond and Streisand later performed the song together at the 22nd Annual Grammy Awards.

The performance was staged the evening before by Streisand. After learning of the setup of three stools, two for both singers and a third in the middle holding a bouquet, she shared an alternative scene.

“I said Neil and I would come onstage from two different sides,” recalled Streisand. “There would be no announcement of our names. I made up a whole backstory about this couple. We’ve [been] married for 15 or 20 years, and we’re breaking up. We really are sad to do it, but we’ve had it. We don’t give each other anything anymore, and so we slowly walk together. To me, that’s the way it should have been staged, very simply and coming together to say goodbye in a sense.”

Photo: L. Cohen/WireImage