Video hit Neil Diamond

Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline

In 2007, Neil Diamond revealed that this song is about Caroline Kennedy, who is the daughter of the American president John F. Kennedy. After performing the song via satellite at Caroline's 50th birthday party, he told the Associated Press: "I've never discussed it with anybody before - intentionally. I thought maybe I would tell it to Caroline when I met her someday. I'm happy to have gotten it off my chest and to have expressed it to Caroline. I thought she might be embarrassed, but she seemed to be struck by it and really, really happy."

Diamond added that he was a young, broke songwriter in the '60s when he saw a cute photo of Caroline Kennedy in a magazine. Said Diamond: "It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, next to her pony. It was such an innocent, wonderful picture, I immediately felt there was a song in there." A few years later, Diamond wrote the song in a Memphis hotel in less than an hour. Caroline was 11 years old when the song was released.

David Wild wrote in his book He Is...I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond, "Diamond says that 'Sweet Caroline' just seemed to come out of 'the excitement of the moment.' More specifically, Diamond's excitement seemed to focus on a chord in the song's 'touching hands' section, a relatively unusual A6 chord that he had never played before."

Even though the song has nothing to do with Boston, the Red Sox, baseball or New England, it is played at Red Sox home games in Fenway Park between the 8th and 9th innings. The song was first played in honor of a Red Sox employee who named her newborn daughter "Caroline" in 1998, and it caught on with the fans, getting regular play since 2003. It's an audience participation number in that the crowd sings "dum-dum-dum" after the words "Sweet Caroline" in the chorus and "so good, so good, so good" after "good times never seemed so good." This Fenway ritual is portrayed in the Drew Barrymore/Jimmy Fallon movie Fever Pitch. (thanks, Bob - The Colony, TX)

Neil Diamond told AOL Music Canada that Frank Sinatra's version of this with a big band is his favorite of all the covers of his material. He explained: "He did it his way. He didn't cop my record at all. I've heard that song by a lot of people and there are a lot of good versions. But Sinatra's swinging, big band version tops them all by far." Other artists to record the song include Waylon Jennings, The Drifters, Julio Iglesias and Elvis Presley.

The lyrics:

Where it began, I can't begin to knowing

But then I know it's growing strong

Was in the spring

Then spring became the summer

Who'd have believed you'd come along

Hands, touching hands

Reaching out, touching me, touching you

[Chorus]

Sweet Caroline

Good times never seemed so good

I'd be inclined

To believe they never would

Oh no, no

Look at the night and it don't seem so lonely

We filled it up with only two

And when I hurt

Hurting runs off my shoulder

How can I hurt when I'm holding you

One, touching one

Reaching out, touching me, touching you

[Chorus]