8 songs you didn’t know Neil Diamond wrote that were made famous by other artists

Neil Diamond has sold over 130 million records in his 60-year career, had 16 Top 10 albums and 38 Top 40 singles, won 10 Grammy awards, and been inducted into the Songwriters and Rock & Roll Halls of Fames, among other countless awards, honors, and achievements.

Diamond was drawn to songwriting as a teen and began penning songs while studying at New York University, eventually signing with Columbia in 1962. Diamond continued writing for other artists at several publishing houses after a brief stint releasing several singles under the label, often penning songs for himself that were released by other artists before he could even record them, such as The Monkees’ 1966 No. 1 hit “I’m a Believer”—along with three other songs for the pop group—and Jay and the Americans’ Top 10 hit “Sunday and Me” recorded and released a year earlier.

More musicians quickly followed suit, with Elvis Presley reinterpreting Diamond’s ballad “And the Grass Won’t Pay No Mind” in 1969 and recording “Sweet Caroline” a year later—a song Frank Sinatra would similarly remake, big band style, in 1974. In 2000, Johnny Cash performed Diamond’s 1966 hit “Solitary Man” for his third American Recordings album, earning a Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.

Diamond has penned 10 No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, including “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” “America,” “Yesterday’s Songs,” “Heartlight,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “I’ve Been This Way Before,” “If You Know What I Mean,” “Song Sung Blue,” “Longfellow Serenade,” and “Desirée,” but it was often cover versions of some of his greatest songs that gained more attention over the decades than his own originals.

“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,” Diamond told me in 2020. “And for the most part, I recall creating the songs and how I felt at the time. And that is unusual. Many songs are written and then go on to something else, and they can turn be fantastic or not. But they all leave some kind of scar on you.”

Though his songs are still great in their original form, here are eight Neil Diamond songs that were popularized by other musicians.

“Sunday and Me,” Jay & the Americans (1965)
Written by Neil Diamond