Drawn from the same sessions as the Rick Rubin produced 12 Songs and Home Before Dark, Wild At Heart gathers ten songs that had been sitting in the studio shadows. Guests include Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench.
Fifteen years after he first stepped into Rick Rubin’s famously austere studio orbit, Neil Diamond is sharing the final chapter of that unlikely but transformative partnership. Wild At Heart completes a trilogy that began with 2005’s 12 Songs and continued with 2008’s Home Before Dark. And now that the conclusion is here, it feels like a conversation you didn’t know you need to have and don’t want to end.
For the new album and finale of the trilogy, Diamond revisits and refines songs that deftly lean into the stark beauty Rubin coaxed from him nearly two decades ago. The arrangements are skeletal but deliberate, built on hushed guitars, faint keys, and the kind of calm that makes every lyric hit harder.
Diamond’s commanding voice carries these songs with a authority. There’s no rush here, no need to prove anything. Instead, Wild At Heart unfolds like a series of handwritten letters, each one sealed at times long past. On “Shine On,” he offers fatherly guidance that feels both personal and universal, while “You Can’t Have It All” wrestles with a restless world that still hasn’t found its footing. The questions often more important than the answers.
As an artist synonymous with grand, sweeping romance, Diamond keeps things close to the chest this time. “The Secret You” and “You Still Look Good To Me” add new entries to his long catalog of love songs, but they arrive without fanfare. No spectacle, just heartfelt sincerity. Elsewhere, “Talking It To Death” and “Forgotten” peer into love’s frayed edges, where memory and regret blur together like headlights on a busy highway.
The album’s quiet power is amplified by the musicians surrounding him. Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench bring their own touch, while players like Smokey Hormel and Matt Sweeney add their own color without crowding the room. It’s a band that knows when to step forward and when to disappear entirely.
What’s striking about Wild At Heart is how it reframes Diamond’s legacy. This is the same songwriter who gave the world “Sweet Caroline,” a song that continues to echo through stadiums and living rooms alike. Yet here, he trades that bombast for something quieter, more searching. The hooks are still there, but they don’t demand you sing along, they simply demand your attention. As the final installment of his work with Rubin, Wild At Heart closes the book on an unlikely collaboration. And if this is indeed the last word in the Diamond-Rubin trilogy, it’s a fitting one: understated, very human, and still coming from the heart of a songwriter who’s never stopped chasing the ultimate melody.