| Heartlight | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | August 27, 1982 | |||
| Recorded | 1982 | |||
| Studio |
| |||
| Genre | Pop | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Neil Diamond, Carole Bayer Sager, Burt Bacharach, Tom Hensley, Richard Bennett, Michael Masser, David Foster | |||
| Neil Diamond chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Singles from Heartlight | ||||
| ||||
Heartlight is the fifteenth studio album by Neil Diamond. It was released in August 1982 on Columbia Records. The album spent 34 weeks on the charts and peaked at #9. [1] For shipments of a million copies it was certified Platinum by the RIAA. [2]
Contents
The title track, reportedly inspired by the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial , [3] peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart in late 1982, while "I'm Alive" reached #35 on the Hot 100 in early 1983. The song "Lost Among The Stars" has co-writer Burt Bacharach reproducing his melody from his hit "Trains and Boats and Planes" from 17 years prior.
The album was the last of a decade-long streak of Platinum albums by Diamond—he would not have another platinum album certified until his first Christmas album in the 1990s—and his last top 10 album for a decade. The song "Heartlight" was Diamond's last top 10 pop hit and also his last #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, while "I'm Alive" was his last top 40 hit. While Diamond continued having some success and periodic hits, and some television specials and film appearances, the period after Heartlight did not have for him the same level of sales, notoriety or fame that the preceding times did.
Billboard described "I'm Alive" as "a paean to dogged optimism" and said that "Handclaps and familiar chord changes recall the good old days of [Diamond's] earliest pop hits." [4]
