From Ken Burns

Diamond gems or Diamond dogs: Charlie contemplates
Don's on board for Jason & Red Red Wine. Read Charlie's views to see if it's unanimous among the coaches.
The music of Neil Diamond could provide one of the key examples of the importance of song choice of any week in Idol history. Depending on what songs the Final Five select for Tuesday, we could have ourselves a nice little tour of good mainstream '60s and '70s pop-rock, or a schmaltz-fest to rival anything this side of Clay Aiken's id. Diamond could be an Idol's best friend, or his worst enemy.

Few performers over the last 50 years have had their fingers in as many trends as Neil Diamond. True, he never had a punk or disco phase. But he began the hitmaking part of his career as a pen-for-hire at the Brill Building, hitting it big when The Monkees got a hold of his I'm a Believer, which became one of the biggest hits by any American rock band in the entire 1960s. This success gave him the chance for a recording career of his own, which he kicked off with the pop-Dylan Solitary Man.

Although he went through a period of searching for artistic "relevance," possibly under the influence of his New York contemporary Paul Simon, Diamond always did stay pretty firmly on the pop end of the singer-songwriter spectrum. Songs such as Cracklin' Rosie, Thank the Lord for the Night Time and Sweet Caroline had their charms but didn't display much of a point of view. As the 1970s progressed, Diamond became more prominent as a live performer, and his concert tours consistently ranked with the biggest rock acts in the world (the Idol performers would do well to pick Diamond's brain on the subject of connecting with an audience as well as getting his opinion on what to perform).

But with the Vegas-style concerts came increasingly forgettable music, with goop such as Yesterday's Songs (which could be the theme for this entire season of Idol), and the wretched Headed for the Future. Since his prime hitmaking days ended in the 1980s, Diamond has released adult contemporary CDs, a country album, and even that proverbial sign of a career reassessment under way, a "back to basics" record under the auspices of Rick Rubin.
The final five are all too young to remember when Diamond was a common presence on the chart, but the impersonality of his lyrics have made him a popular source for cover versions for decades, and he's been known to have appreciation for radical reinventions such as Deep Purple's take on Kentucky Woman, or strangest of all, the humongous success UB40 had with Red Red Wine. For this reason, I expect him to be a good mentor, and to be encouraging of anything unusual the singers might want to try. One might again ask if Diamond, whose music is most popular with the generation that will be watching NCIS at the same time Idol is on, is the sort of theme that will inspire the show's wavering young audience to tune in, but that ship has sailed.