DIAMOND DISC
Gail Wahlquist
10 November 1974

NEIL DIAMOND Serenade (CBS 69-067) is in the successful style of his recent LPs.

Every track ·is well structured with strings and things, every ballad gets a dramatic presentation . which you might put down as pretentious if it didn't come off.

I‘ve Been This Way Before reminds me of the Frank Sinatra ballads of the sixties, the really great ones which nobody listened to because they only wanted rock and roll.

Diamond gets away with it, singing to those who have lived through the rock generation, the Monkees and all that (after all, didn’t Neil Diamond write the Monkee’s biggest hits?).

The Last Picasso, which starts out world weary, ands up as a direct song of some importance.

Diamonds lyrics are better than the usual. He is not afraid of metaphor and avoids cynicism.