Neil Diamond Talks About How Loss Inspired Him to Pen "Christmas Prayers"

Legendary rock artist Neil Diamond has just released his brand new festive single "Christmas Prayers," a song lifted from his new album Acoustic Christmas. "Christmas Prayers" is a special song which pays tribute to the loved ones that may no longer be with us this holiday season but are always in our thoughts. Today you can watch Neil perform the song in the studio 

Speaking with Billboard magazine, Diamond talks about how "Christmas Prayers" was written at the request of his wife overcoming a time of loss, the loss of her grandmother. " Well, in this case it was a song. It came out of my wife Katie's heart and mind, she was feeling blue about the loss 20 years ago of her grandmother, and it all came up about two Christmases ago. And she asked, or maybe I volunteered, to try and write something that would make her feel a little bit better. I did and I liked the song a lot and I was in the studio with a group of musicians."

As soon as Diamond and his team recorded the song, they knew "Christmas Prayers" was special. "We had just finished recording something and I pulled this thing out. I said, "Let's listen to this and see what you guys think of this." It really caught their imagination and before we knew it they were playing and I was singing and it was becoming a wonderful record. So we just continued on that road and in a relative short period we had 10 or 12 tracks, Christmas tracks, and they were all acoustic because that was the setup that we had in the studio then. It wasn't planned or anything and that would become Acoustic Christmas, and the song was "Christmas Prayers.""

"It was very warm and intimate and I thought it would be great if we could put together enough tracks for a record that's close and is warm feeling as "Christmas Prayers" turned out to be. That's what we tried to do from that point and I feel very good about the album. It's a really nice little album." 

The album features new recordings of holiday classics and original songs by Neil. Target is exclusively offering two bonus tracks, 'We Three Kings' and the original song '#1 Record for Christmas.' This new collection was produced by Don Was (Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan) and Jacknife Lee (U2, R.E.M.), the pair behind Diamond's 2014 acclaimed Melody Road. 

 

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