Beautiful Noise Song

[Ceola Roefaro]

NeilDiamond has released 39 albums and sold more than 130 million records in his 60-year career year. A Beautiful Noise is a Broadway bio-musical that tells the Brooklyn-born superstar's story through his extensive song catalog.

The show features a book by Anthony McCarten (Bohemian Rhapsody), direction by Michael Mayer (Funny Girl), and famous songs and lesser-known tunes penned by Diamond. The show also includes a few tunes co-written with others, adding up to more than 30 songs that paint a full portrait of his career.

The hit tune speaks to singing away the blues or clouds of depression. Diamond struggles with these blues, and in the musical, he sings this tune with Marcia Murphey (Robyn Hurder). The Bitter End employee becomes a major player in his life after sympathizing with his battle.

A potent love song packed with spiritual energy concludes the show, celebrating Diamond's ultimate and undeniable success amid his hardships. To experience these songs firsthand, hear the beautiful noise for yourself at the Broadhurst Theatre.

Last January and February at the very beginning of 2020, I was recording in Victoria, BC Canada with my Producer Joby Baker at Baker Studios. I remember hearing this thing about covid 19 in the background of the recording process, but never in a million years would any of us seen this coming!

After my two weeks of recording finished, I flew back to Byron and straight into rehearsals for a 17 date tour in Australia. My dance card for the year was maxed, and finishing the album was number one. I needed to get back to Canada to record a final vocal on one last song that Mik and I wrote called, Time to Heal It. In addition, Joby and I were scheduled to travel to Mali in May to record some beautiful singers for a song called, I Am a Candle, remix I Believe in You, and then do final mixes for the two previous mentioned track before mastering the whole lot. Not too much to do really! Oh and I forgot, meet with set-designer to finalise the set and prepare for rehearsals in September.

Yes, 2020 was a bit of a kick in the guts on a few levels: it completely halted production of our the show. IAABN was scheduled to go into rehearsals in Sept at HOTA, now the recording schedule is shot, and the money we were expecting dried up from the shows for our production (As we were only able to do four out of the 17 shows) was a massive loss to Big Mother my touring company.

Joby and I wrote this song together from scratch. Normally, I will write on my own and bring sketches to him and we work from there. But in this instance, I just shared with Joby the direction I wanted to go in and he went from there. Joby spent about six hours on his own working on this, and in the end I loved it and audiences love it too, which makes it even more fun! Enjoy!

I was watching Thelma and Louise and heard one of your songs and remembered how much I love

your music and then I ended up in a google portal eventually making it here. What a treat! Can I purchase these songs?? I love them!

My wife and I had our first child this past Monday. We decided to go the midwife route and have the baby in the comfort of our own home. And though we didn't plan on it ahead of time, Sigur Rs became a spur of the moment, life-altering soundtrack to our birth. It was an experience so impactful, I felt the need to share it with the internet. So here is my story.

Around 3am on February 4, my wife Kiely started having contractions. But as existing parents can attest, first stage labor is a VERY different animal... In first stage labor it's totally possible to get through the one minute bouts of discomfort, and then go back to watching Unsolved Mysteries or whatever. Which is basically what we were doing.

But by mid-afternoon, the contractions grew closer together and evolved into something else entirely... It became clear that Kiely had graduated to a state of labor where she couldn't bounce back to normal reality in between contractions. We were now well within the fucked up, otherworldly process of giving birth.

Kiely and I had not previously discussed what music she might want to listen to during labor... which is weird because of the fact that we work in the music industry, and we had just spent the previous several months obsessing over every aspect of our birth plan... but somehow we never broached the subject of our "labor music".

So it wasn't until the intense labor began that I finally asked Kiely what (if any) music she wanted to listen to. The first thing out of her mouth was "something soothing and ambient, like Sigur Rs". And rather than try and juggle LPs at a time like this, I put on an endless Spotify playlist that kept feeding us new random Sigur Rs songs for the duration of the labor... It was magical.

The peaks and valleys of the music seemed uncannily timed with her contractions. When there were relaxed periods of music, her body responded by relaxing, and when her body went into contractions the music seemingly responded with glorious intensity. Her unconscious coos and groans melted with the music into a beautiful, somewhat disturbing chorus.

Here is some video evidence:

At around 10pm Kiely migrated to the birthing pool, located in our nursery. And at 11:30pm on February 4, Olive Isadora Hofstetter slipped into my arms. I do not remember what song was playing when she was born, but I know it was perfect.

Throughout the 19.5 hours of labor, we didn't listen to any music other than Sigur Rs, and I don't believe we repeated any song twice (though I'm sure from the perspective of our birth attendants it sounded like the same song on repeat for 8 hours). The music of Sigur Rs, like the act of giving birth, is not always beautiful. Certain aspects are ugly and terrifying. But it is a journey - conveying a perspective of reality that is at once wholly organic, yet impossibly grand.

The music of Sigur Rs helped us fully feel the fact that we were in the midst of one of the most meaningful human moments we could ever hope to experience. A new life was coming from our bodies. Even in the moment, we knew this was something we would remember forever, and something that would impact the world even after we are gone.

We would like to thank Sigur Rs for inadvertently creating the best birthing soundtrack imaginable, and forever impacting our lives as a result.

At A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, the audience excitement for "Sweet Caroline" is palpable as theatergoers dance in their seats and raise their arms in the air. At & Juliet, the audience screams and cheers during "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" as if they're at a boy band concert.

This music generates such enthusiasm thanks to the craftmanship of songwriters Neil Diamond and Max Martin, but also Sonny Paladino and Bill Sherman. Paladino (A Beautiful Noise) and Sherman (& Juliet) work as music supervisor, arranger, and orchestrator for their respective shows (Bob Gaudio and Brian Usifer are co-orchestrators for A Beautiful Noise and Dominic Fallacaro did additional orchestrations and arrangements for & Juliet). They are responsible for how the songs fit and sound in the show, from placing songs in the appropriate key to writing out parts for each instrument.

A Beautiful Noise is about Neil Diamond's life and career told through flashbacks, from the perspective of an older Diamond in therapy. In & Juliet, William Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway, convinces him to change the ending of Romeo & Juliet so that Juliet lives. It uses the music of Max Martin, the songwriter responsible for more number one hits than any other artist this century.

The songs already have a proven track record, but as Sherman explains, pop music can be repetitive and is often more about the melody than the story. "In theater, every lyric counts," he says, "so a lot of it was taking things out and then trying to build a whole song with less material, so you would get to the choruses sooner or you would get to a bridge faster or you wouldn't have the bridge at all because it didn't really work for the story."

Although all the songs in & Juliet are written by Max Martin, they were recorded by different artists, including the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry. In some ways that was a blessing because the artists weren't as important as the songs themselves, but at the same time, the music needed to sound like a cohesive score. "I needed something that would glue them all together," says Sherman, "and so in my head it was like if Shakespeare is representative of Renaissance times, what's that? It's lutes and strings. That to me encompasses that time period." The result is a string-heavy band featuring guitars, bass, drums, violin, viola, and cello.

In the case of A Beautiful Noise, Neil Diamond already unifies the music, but it came with its own challenges. "You have to deliver some of the songs the way that people know and love them," says Paladino. "But you can't just do every song the way Neil Diamond does it because that's just a cruise ship show, it's not a Broadway musical."

Bookwriter Anthony McCarten gave Paladino a solid blueprint with the book, but things really clicked when AnnMarie Milazzo, the vocal designer for the show, came up with the opening number in which the ensemble, called the Noise, sings a cappella snippets in a montage that sets the tone for the musical. "It's the most important part as an arranger to be able to take these great songs and be able to turn them into new sort of ideas," says Paladino. "I think we always want to be true to the song without doing a rock band version of every song."

One section that lets the audience hear the songs in a new way is a hybrid of the songs "America" and "Brooklyn Roads," which are woven together to tell the story of his immigrant family with the Noise featured heavily. Then it goes into "Shilo," about Diamond's imaginary friend. These three songs paint a picture of Diamond's childhood.

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