I Am...I Said

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“I Am...I Said”
“I Am...I Said” cover
Single by Neil Diamond
B-side "Done Too Soon"
Released March 1971
Format 7" 45 RPM
Genre Pop/Rock
Length 3:32
Label Uni
Writer(s) Neil Diamond
Neil Diamond singles chronology
"Do It"
(1970)		 "I Am...I Said"
(1971)		 "Done Too Soon"
(1971)

"I Am...I Said" is a song written and recorded by Neil Diamond. Released as a single in March 1971,[1] it was quite successful, at first slowly climbing the charts, then more quickly rising to number 4 on the U.S. pop singles chart by May 1971.[2][3] It fared similarly across the Atlantic, reaching number 4 on the UK pop singles chart as well.[4]

"I Am...I Said" took Diamond four months to compose.[3] One of his most intensely personal efforts, it depicts the singer lost between two worlds:

Well, I'm New York City born and raised
But nowadays, I'm lost between two shores
L.A.'s fine, but it ain't home —
New York's home but it ain't mine no more ...

Verses start quietly in a low vocal range, half sung and half spoken, with a soft rock guitar and light strings backing. By the chorus climaxes, the vocals are much louder and higher in pitch, with horns, heavier drums and more strings joining in, but the singer even more uncertain:

I am, I cried!
I am, said I.
And I am lost, and I can't even say why ...

"I Am...I Said" was later included on Diamond's November 1971 album Stones. The single version leads off the LP, while a reprise of the song, taken from midway to a variant ending with Diamond exclaiming "I am!", concludes.[5]

Critical opinion on "I Am...I Said" has generally been good, with Rolling Stone calling its lyric excellent in a 1972 review,[5] while The New Yorker used it to exemplify Diamond's songwriting opaqueness in a 2006 retrospective.[6] A 2008 Diamond profile in The Daily Telegraph simply referred to the song's "raging existential angst,"[7] and All Music Guide calls it "an impassioned statement of emotional turmoil ... very much in tune with the confessional singer/songwriter movement of the time."[1]

The song garnered Diamond his first Grammy Awards nomination, for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.[1]

"I Am...I Said" has been included in live versions on Diamond's Hot August Night (from 1972, in a performance that Rolling Stone would later label "fantastically overwrought"[8]) and Greatest Hits: 1966-1992 (from 1992), as well as in various compilations.

Brooke White performed the song on American Idol's seventh season during its Neil Diamond week,[9] changing the lyric to replace New York City with her home state of Arizona.[9] Among the foreign versions,we remember the Italian language "La casa degli angeli " ("House of the angels"),performed by Caterina Caselli in the original 1971.[10]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c William Ruhlmann. Neil Diamond: Biography. All Music Guide. Retrieved on 2008-04-30.
  2. ^ Whitburn, Joel (1983). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits: 1955 to present. Billboard Publications. ISBN 0-8230-7511-7.  p. 88.
  3. ^ a b Jackson, Laura (2005). Neil Diamond: His Life, His Music, His Passion. ECW Press. ISBN 1550227076.  pp. 80–81.
  4. ^ Neil Diamond search results. everyHit.com. Retrieved on 2008-04-30.
  5. ^ a b Paul Gambaccini. "Neil Diamond: Stones", Rolling Stone, 1972-01-20. Retrieved on 2008-04-30. 
  6. ^ Sasha Frere-Jones. "Hello, Again", The New Yorker, 2006-01-16. Retrieved on 2008-04-30. 
  7. ^ Neil McCormick. "Neil Diamond: the hurt, the dirt, the shirts", The Daily Telegraph, 2008-03-05. Retrieved on 2008-05-02. 
  8. ^ Dan Epstein. "Neil Diamonds' Jewels", Rolling Stone, 2005-11-03. Retrieved on 2008-05-08. 
  9. ^ a b Joanna Weiss. "'Idol:' Loose Diamonds", The Boston Globe, 2008-04-29. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  10. ^ Augusta Grignano. Caterina Caselli (Italian). La voce delle donne. Retrieved on 2008-05-16.