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Neil Diamond's long, strange trip to the top

5:13 p.m. · May 8, 2008 · by Jim Allen

Neil Diamond had his first hit 42 years ago, but he's never had a Number One album. Until now. That's what the stats are projecting, anyway; according to Billboard, the early sales figures for the new album Diamond released this week, Home Before Dark (his second in a row to be produced by Rick Rubin), show the 67-year-old to be outpacing everyone from Madonna to Clay Aiken.

Maybe it's got something to do with his recent American Idol appearance, or perhaps the fact that Home Before Dark, a spare, acoustic-based album with contributions from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, is his most affecting, unpretentious effort since the days of 'Cherry Cherry." Or maybe those legions of fanatical, bouquet-tossing middle-aged women who flank the front rows of every Diamond concert have mobilized into an unstoppable consumer force. Whatever the reason, the old Solitary Man's at the top of his game after more than four decades.