Customer Reviews

Heartlight

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In assembling a Neil Diamond collection, many people might tend to overlook this album. After all, only one song on it was a real hit, and one more makes it into the boxed set "In My Lifetime". Nevertheless, this album is a real delight, and with the possible exceptions of the "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" LP and "Taproot Manuscript", this is my favorite true stand-alone ND album. (The likes of "Love Songs", "Rainbow", and "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" not counting as regular albums of Neil's). "In Ensenada", "Hurricane", and "Front Page Story" are great...heck, the whole album is great! Get it, you won't be dissapointed.

"Heartlight" is a gem of an album Neil Diamond put out in 1982. Amidst this wonderfully crafted array of satisfying easy listening tunes lies some up tempo rocking numbers that will have you dancing in the aisles. The title track is taken from the motion picture "E.T". My personal favorites other than the title track are: "I'm Alive", "Front Page Story" and "Comin' Home". The fact that this CD contains songs written by Burt Bacharach makes "Heartlight" a masterpiece. Buy your copy today!

It is the most beautiful cd's neil has ever done. I already have this cd. I didn't get it from Amazon. "SORRY!" I advise anyone who loves the music of Neil should get it.

Until the release of his box set "Stages," virtually all of Neil's later albums were mediocre at best. This album is quieter, more melodic and less abrasive than Diamond's subsequent releases making heavy use of synthesizer and guitar picking. I also enjoy Ron Tutt's style of drumming much more than longtime drummer Dennis St. John's stale, tired, routine playing. There is nary a bad track on this album, possibly his most underrated one, and I was glad to hear that even people who gave it bad reviews still liked the tracks entitled "Front Page Story" and "In Ensenada." They are my two favs as well and really wish he would do a live version of them.

Neil Diamond has long been one of my very most favorite artists. I Feel that "Heartlight" was overlooked and under-rated for the most part. If You as I do appreciate the totality of the songs and lyrics you select.....then you'll be very pleasantly surprized with "HEARTLIGHT"; and it will strike all the right cords in Your Heart too!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, I could not agree with some reviewers that this is an inferrior & lifeless album from Neil Diamond.This album might have only one hit single 'Heartlight' but other songs are also very good.Each song in the album is melodious and has good lyric in it.I like the songs now as I used to like 16 years back when I bought this album in casette.Apart from slow and sentimental pop numbers like 'I'm guilty' & 'Fool for you', it has some catchy fast paced tracks like 'Starflight', 'Comin Home' and 'I'm alive'.Also rest of the songs 'Front page story', 'In Ensenada' are quite enjoyable.If want to enjoy some good music with great vocal accompanied with thoughtful lyrics, this is the right stuff for you.The album worths your money.

With "Heartlight" and - especially - "In Ensenada" (both co-written by Burt Bacharach & Carol Bayer Sager!)Neil performs two of the greatest ballads ever. A must hear!

This album shows what happens to great artists when $$$$$$ controls content.

I have only heard "Heartlight" on the radio. However, I would like to know what movie inspired Neil Diamond to write this song. Thank you for this information.

I remember sitting in my dad's pickup about 11PM out in the rural sagebrush waiting to take my mother to work (she didn't drive). The Ford only had an AM radio, but at night KFI radio in Los Angeles would fade in and out and I could listen to some rock songs on the radio that didn't come in during daylight hours. I heard the driving "Desire'e" rocker and enjoyed it. My brother became something of a Neil Diamond fan and acquired several of his albums--LOVE AT THE GREEK, HOT AUGUST NIGHTS, some of his other rocker early `70s albums, up into this album.

I found that Neil Diamond placed a song in his career with his rock `n' roll chief rival, Pat Boone, and that Pat had one of his last Top-40 hits with it, "Ten Lonely Guys," on Dot 45 16391, in 1962. ND's breakthrough came, though, some few years later when he placed "Guitar Man" on the Hot-100, which was a middling hit, then "In the Ghetto," and "Kentucky Rain," on the RCA-distributed Bang label. Those Bang Records still speak to me; "Shilo" especially from when I was a lonely ten year old boy. The style was apparently too restrictive for him and he left the label after putting out those juicy guitar rockers, softening his style and appealing with a more feminine-friendly look, sporting a long gorgeous mane of hair and appearing on his top-rated TV show featuring his mother, a renowned actress who'd appeared in OKLAHOMA, Shirley, married to Ted Cassidy, a middling TV star, and ND, in his singer/songwriter character on the show, still displaying his guitar, placed at the top of the charts with songs like "I Think I Love You," "Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted," and "I Woke Up In Love This Morning" on the Bell label.

By 1973-74, his fortunes and style softened again, he lost the guitar even as a prop, but had a #1 pop single with Clive Davis's coaching: "Mandy," an easy listening smash that broadened his market considerably, though at the expensive of his Brill Building pop/rock fans, who preferred the "old" more rock feel. Neil continued a string a very lucrative hits through the `70s, "I Write the Songs," "Can't Smile Without You," "Somewhere in the Night," but by the end of the `70s his hits began to play out, and while into the early `80s he updated his easy listening signature style having lesser hits with his singing partner Russell Hitchcock ("Lost In Love," "Even the Nights are Better," and a bombastic attempt at a powerful pop/rock record, "Making Love Out of Nothing at All," etc...), HEARTLIGHT marks the end of his most productive top sellers. I give it two stars; it's a pleasant work, but pales in comparison to "I Am I Said," "Cherry, Cherry," and "Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show."