The Last Thing On My Mind

"The Last Thing on My Mind" by Neil Diamond: A Mid-Career Gem in the Heat of Summer

Neil Diamond in 1973

By the summer of 1973, Neil Diamond had already had a remarkable decade. He had written hits for other artists, launched his own recording career with a run of top-ten singles, and cemented his status as one of America's most commercially reliable entertainers. Hot August Night, his double live album recorded at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, had come out in 1972 and introduced many listeners to the scale and warmth of his concert performances. Diamond was at this point a genuine star with a devoted audience, navigating the transition between the pop-oriented sounds of the late 1960s and the more adult-contemporary territory that would define his work through the 1970s.

The Song's Moment

"The Last Thing on My Mind" was not a Tom Paxton composition transported into Diamond's catalog; the title was shared by the folk standard, but this was Diamond's own work, sitting within his 1973 release schedule with the easy confidence of a writer who knew his strengths. The track arrived during a period when Diamond was expanding his audience through television appearances and Las Vegas residencies while maintaining his connection to listeners who had followed him since the Brill Building days. The production had the warm orchestral quality that characterized his best work of the period, with arrangements that framed his voice rather than competing with it.

A Modest Chart Showing

The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 25, 1973, at position 84. It climbed through September, reaching its peak of number 56 on September 22, 1973, and spent six weeks on the chart in total. That placing was modest by Diamond's standards; he had consistently reached the top twenty throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. But chart peaks do not always capture the full story of a song's reception, particularly for an artist with Diamond's loyal following, who bought his albums and attended his concerts regardless of whether a given single cracked the top forty. The track reached 7.4 million YouTube views, reflecting consistent interest from the dedicated Diamond audience.

The Broader Diamond Context

1973 was a year of transition for American popular music. The idealism of the singer-songwriter movement was peaking; Carole King's Tapestry had recently set sales records; James Taylor and Carly Simon were defining what thoughtful pop could sound like. Diamond occupied a slightly different position in this landscape, more overtly theatrical than the California singer-songwriters, more explicitly populist in his appeal, but no less serious about craft. His work of this period rewards attention from listeners willing to meet it on its own terms rather than measuring it against more critically fashionable contemporaries.

A Durable Legacy

Diamond's catalog from the early 1970s has aged more gracefully than it was sometimes given credit for at the time. The orchestral arrangements that critics occasionally dismissed as overwrought now sound deliberate and considered, the work of someone who genuinely loved cinematic scale in popular music. "The Last Thing on My Mind" sits within that body of work as a representative example of what Diamond could do when the song, the arrangement, and the performance aligned without strain. For listeners who came to him through his later work, it offers a useful window into the period when his artistic ambitions and commercial instincts were most productively in balance. The catalog rewards exactly the kind of patient, unhurried listening that pop radio rarely permits, and this track is a good place to start that exploration. Diamond was also, it is worth noting, a craftsman of melody in the classic songwriter tradition, and that quality comes through clearly here.

Settle in with it; the orchestral framing and Diamond's command of a lyric are pleasures worth revisiting.

"The Last Thing on My Mind" — Neil Diamond's singular moment on the 1970s charts.