For more than 30 years, Neil Diamond has released his own renditions of holiday classics. Now, the “Cracklin’ Rosie” singer is releasing a curated collection of his favorite holiday songs, featuring tracks pulled from his previous four holiday albums for A Neil Diamond Christmas, out Oct. 28.
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Personally selected by Diamond, the 24 tracks were culled from his 1992 release The Christmas Album, The Christmas Album Volume II, released in 1994, A Cherry Cherry Christmas, (2009), and his most recent Acoustic Christmas from 2016.
Available in vinyl and CD formats, all of the tracks on A Neil Diamond Christmas ll were remastered under Diamond’s along with his longtime engineer Bernie Becker. Diamond and Becker also created a new mix of “O Holy Night,” which he originally released on The Christmas Album.
In a career spanning 60 years, Neil Diamond has sold more than 130 million records, has had 16 Top 10 albums, 38 Top 40 singles, won 10 Grammy awards, and received inductions into the Songwriters and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Earlier in 2022, Diamond sold his entire musical catalog to Universal Music Group, a deal that encompasses all of his recordings—and dozens of hits like “Sweet Caroline,” “Song Sung Blue” and “Cracklin’ Rosie”—in addition to 110 unreleased tracks, an unreleased album, and archival long-form videos.
“The relationship between you and those good songs stays with you and you remember the hard times, the glad times, and the bad times working with the songs,” said Diamond in 2020 of his songwriting. “And most of these songs I remember the actual act of writing and what I was feeling at that time. And that’s not usual. A lot of songs you write and then you move on to something else and it can come out great or not great. But they all leave their scars on you in some way or another.”
Photo: PRNewsfoto/Universal Music Enterprises
