“Both Sides Now” in Neil Diamond’s voice is a quiet turning of the head—looking back at youth’s bright illusions, then forward into the softer, harder wisdom of not being entirely sure.
The most important context comes first: Neil Diamond didn’t introduce “Both Sides Now” to the world as a hit single of his own. He placed it as an album moment—Side Two, track 1—on Touching You, Touching Me, released November 14, 1969 on Uni Records, produced by Tom Catalano and Tommy Cogbill, with Lee Holdridge arranging and conducting. His version sits there like a thoughtful pause before the rest of the side unfolds, and that placement matters: it’s the sound of an artist choosing interpretation—choosing conversation with the songwriters of his time—rather than only insisting on his own declarations.
On the charts, the “arrival” story is therefore the album’s arrival. In the U.S., Touching You, Touching Me debuted at No. 188 on the Billboard 200 and eventually peaked at No. 30. Those numbers aren’t just trivia; they mark a particular moment in Diamond’s career when his audience was widening—when the public was beginning to trust him not only as a maker of catchy, dramatic pop singles, but as a singer who could inhabit other people’s truths with dignity and emotional weight. Wikipedia notes this album was his first since 1966 to feature notable renditions of other writers’ material alongside his own.
And what a song to borrow.
“Both Sides Now” was written by Joni Mitchell, and by the time Diamond recorded it, the song already carried the glow of something newly “classic.” One of its most influential early versions—Judy Collins’—had become a major hit, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart, and it went on to win a Grammy for Best Folk Performance. Mitchell herself soon included the song on her 1969 album Clouds, and over time it would become one of her defining compositions. So when Diamond chose it for Touching You, Touching Me, he wasn’t chasing a trend so much as stepping into a new literary space—where pop could be reflective, where a melody could feel like memory thinking out loud.
The story behind Diamond’s choice becomes clearer when you look at the album around it. Touching You, Touching Me pairs Diamond originals with covers that feel carefully selected for emotional maturity: Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles,” Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Until It’s Time for You to Go,” and, sitting at the top of Side Two like a small manifesto, Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” It’s as if Diamond is saying—without making a speech—that he’s listening to the wider conversation of late-’60s songwriting, not merely competing in the singles race. A later retrospective piece even frames Diamond’s Mitchell covers as part of his engagement with her songwriting during that era, placing his “Both Sides Now” specifically on this 1969 album.
What does the song mean when Diamond sings it?
At its core, “Both Sides Now” is about the way experience re-educates the heart. It begins in wonder—clouds imagined as castles and angel hair—then gradually admits that wonder is not the whole truth. Later verses widen the lens: love and life themselves are seen from more than one angle, and what once looked simple becomes complicated, even contradictory. Mitchell’s lyric ends not with certainty, but with a humble recognition of how much remains unknowable.
Diamond’s gift here is that he doesn’t treat that humility as weakness. He treats it as adulthood.
Where some singers float above the lyric, Diamond leans into it with a grounded, almost conversational sincerity—like someone revisiting old beliefs with the lights down low, not trying to impress anyone, only trying to be honest. And because his public image so often involved big gestures—romantic grandeur, bright choruses—there’s something quietly moving about hearing him accept a song whose final wisdom is essentially: I’ve learned, I’ve lost illusions, and I still can’t claim to fully understand. That’s not the voice of a showman chasing applause. It’s the voice of a man stepping out of the spotlight for a moment to speak plainly.
There’s also a subtle emotional irony in the timing. Diamond recorded this in 1969, when popular music was changing fast—when youth culture often equated certainty with authenticity. “Both Sides Now” goes the other way: it suggests that the most authentic thing might be doubt, the ability to revise yourself without shame. That idea ages beautifully. It becomes more relevant, not less, as years accumulate. And that’s why Diamond’s version still lands with such tenderness: it doesn’t sound like a period piece. It sounds like a human being admitting that life keeps turning the same truths in the light—until you can’t pretend you’ve only seen one side.
In the end, Neil Diamond’s “Both Sides Now” is less about clouds than about memory—about how we look back and realize we were once certain for reasons that felt pure at the time. Then we look again, older, softer, perhaps a little bruised, and discover that the world didn’t become ugly—it became complex. Diamond doesn’t try to simplify that complexity. He simply sings it, and lets the listener feel what the song has always known: that growing up isn’t losing wonder—it’s learning how to hold wonder and truth in the same hands.