Talking Optimist Blues (Good Day Today)

Well, I've moved servers and am ready to start the blog afresh! As you can tell, I've moved the previous blogs from the other site so you can enjoy them on this one.  But enough of that---on to today's song!

For today, I decided to choose a song off of Neil Diamond's 1996 "Tennessee Moon" album, an album of mainly country-westernish songs. The lyrics for today's song can be found here, for those who like to follow along.

First off, I'd like to say that when this song came out, a lot of Top-40 radio stations would play it here and there, a place where Neil Diamond hadn't been for a long time. As a rabid fan, I took great pride in this. And the reason that the song was played on such stations was because it's a genuinely fun song! You can tell Neil's having fun throughout.

What the song is, is basically a guy complaining about everything in his life, but then saying "the hell with it" and turning all the bad into a "good day today." The way I interpret it is that it's a loving parody of your "typical" country-western song, where the wife leaves and the dog dies and the guy just can't catch a break, even his "hairline's gone."

If you take a look at the lyrics, and listen to the song, the last verse is fairly personal for Neil Diamond. I'll repeat some of it here, it's that relevant- "letter came from 60 Minutes/say they wanna put me in it/tell me my career just died/years ago I might've cried/now I'm just too old to do it/may be true but screw it anyway." He then goes on to sing that he's going to have a good day today, despite all the crap.

I think Neil might've been feeling a bit stale creatively at this point in his career. He even references it in the title track of this album. And I do recall reading somewhere that he did just pick up and go to Tennessee to shake things up a bit. And I think he did a pretty good job at it. And, according to my research, the album peaked at #3 on the US Billboard Top Country Albums. Not too shabby for a kid from Brooklyn, eh?

So if you do have the song handy, take a listen to it. You can't help but feel good during and after listening to it.

As always, I welcome comments and discussion! Would love to hear from you!  Till next time...