The United States was a land of opportunity for Jewish people and immigrants. “America” was corny because it celebrated an uncontested consensus. Kids in school did occasionally throw pennies at me (because Jewish people are greedy, get it?) but overall I was able to hold my Jewish identity fairly lightly, and I assumed that things would get better over time. Opposition to immigration wasn’t at the center of the GOP agenda in 1980, when Diamond released the song. Recently, though, “America” has started to feel less like capitulation and more like over-carbonated defiance. Neil Diamond was the soundtrack for former JCC kids who intermarried and stayed forever in blue jeans - not as a working-class rebellion, but simply because they were too lazy to dress up. If nerdiness was out to get me, well, I had seen its face and become a believer. Part of learning to love Diamond has been growing into my own middle-aged blandness. At some point, I reluctantly admitted to myself that Diamond’s songs sung blue were in fact the music of my people, in the great easy-listening tradition of Art Garfunkel, Bert Bacharach, Kenny Gorelick, Billy Joel, and Robert Zimmerman’s uncomfortably Diamond-adjacent “Just Like a Woman.” I married a Kentucky woman who liked that song about a Kentucky woman, and Diamond in general, even if her childhood guitar hero Joe Perry wouldn’t exactly approve. Over the years, I discovered that I did in fact know many of the lyrics to “Sweet Caroline,” “Heartlight,” and other AM radio staples. And, relatedly or not, you can’t escape Neil Diamond. That kid was not me, the song was not my song, and I was going to follow no particular star right out of the JCC and toward some less humiliating identity.
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He sang of oceans of freedom, but what I heard was a great beige wave, ready to drown me in an unhip unfurling of musical theater bombast. “They’re coming to America!” the slightly-more-nerdy kid warbled, undaunted by my silent prayers to a not-very-well-defined deity. And I also knew, in a dim way, that the song was corny Americana bathos. I did know, though, that my insistent interlocutor was, in the unyielding social calculus of middle-school, slightly more nerdy than I was. I don’t think I knew at the time that the song was about the Jewish immigrant experience. “Far! We’ve been traveling far! Without a home, but not without a star!” To my considerable mortification, he proceeded to demonstrate while strolling around the room with an air of faux casual cool. A slightly older activity-goer, also presumably waiting for pick-up, button-holed me and arbitrarily began to pontificate about how everyone should have a song they had memorized all the way through. I was around 10, waiting in the lobby of our local Jewish Community Center (JCC) for my parents to pick me up from Sunday morning activities. But I remember when I first thought about it. I don’t remember when I first heard Neil Diamond’s chesty lounge-rock classic “America” from his 1980 album The Jazz Singer. What was the world like when you first considered this piece of culture, and what’s changed? Does it hold up as timeless, or is it better left to the past? Pitch us at.
Coming to america neil diamond remix mp3 series#
Musical selections include “Living in America” by James Brown, “I Like it Like That” by Cardi B, “America” by Neil Diamond, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” by Sousa, and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.”Ĭoming to America was composed for the 2020 Hightower High School Marching Band from Missouri City, Texas.Ĭopyright permission is required for this show.Hits Different is a new series that takes a second look at a TV show, song, album, episode, movie, scene, or clip from the past that, in our current context, just hits different. Musical motifs from the lives of many American generations work together to make Coming to America a thrill for any audience, and an even greater joy for the performers.
The immigrant experience is dramatized and celebrated in a show that is built around your most talented musicians, giving them the spotlight while allowing space for the rest of your ensemble to grow and develop their musicianship. America is a joyous mixture that combines into something even greater than its parts… and so is Coming to America, a show which celebrates that diversity by seamlessly melding elements as disparate as James Brown and Neil Diamond, John Philip Sousa, and Cardi B.
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