12 Songs
Album by Neil Diamond
Released	November 8, 2005
Recorded	?
Genre	Rock
Length	54:15
Label	American Recordings/Columbia
Producer(s)	Rick Rubin
Professional reviews
All Music Guide (4/5) link
Neil Diamond chronology
	12 Songs (2005)	N/A

12 Songs is an album by Neil Diamond. It is his first album of all-original, all-new material since 2001's Three Chord Opera. It was produced by Rick Rubin and is the first Diamond album since the Bang Records era to feature the artist playing guitar. Image File history File links 12Songs. ... An album is a collection of related audio tracks, released together commercially in an audio format to the public. ... Essential Neil Diamond album cover. ... November 8 is the 312th day of the year (313th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 53 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or basic musical language (van der Merwe 1989, p. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ... A record label is a brand created by companies that specialize in manufacturing, distributing and promoting audio and video recordings, on various formats including compact discs, LPs, DVD-Audio, SACDs, and cassettes. ... American Recordings is a Los Angeles-based record label headed by record producer Rick Rubin. ... In the music industry, a record producer (or music producer) has many roles, among them controlling the recording sessions, coaching and guiding the performers, and supervising the recording, mixing and mastering processes. ... Frederick Jay Rubin (born 1963) is a record producer and record label owner, best known for his work in the rap and heavy metal genres, and his combination of the two. ... The All Music Guide (AMG) is a metadata database about music owned by All Media Guide. ... Essential Neil Diamond album cover. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... An album is a collection of related audio tracks, released together commercially in an audio format to the public. ... Essential Neil Diamond album cover. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... Frederick Jay Rubin (born 1963) is a record producer and record label owner, best known for his work in the rap and heavy metal genres, and his combination of the two. ... Bang Records was created by Bert Berns in 1965 together with his partners from Atlantic Records: Ahmet Ertegun, Neshui Ertegun and Jerry Wexler (Gerald). ...

The working title for the album was self-titled. The original pressing of the album was copy-protected against illegal music file sharing. Copy prevention, also known as copy protection, is any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information. ... Illegal, or unlawful, is either prohibitted or not authorized by law. ...

Album history

Initial work on the album began after Diamond had concluded his tour behing Three Chord Opera in 2002. Retreating to his Colorado cabin, Diamond found himself temporairily snowed in, and started to pass the time away by starting to work on new material.

Not long afterward, Diamond met Rick Rubin, the producer and founder of Def Jam Records and American Recordings whose diverse resume includes LL Cool J, The Beastie Boys, Slayer, Donovan, Aerosmith, Sheryl Crow, Roy Orbison, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, and Slipknot. Rubin expressed interest in working with Diamond, and the two got together several times at each other's homes before ever going into the recording studio. Def Jam is a hip-hop record label founded in 1984 by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons with artists like LL Cool J, Run DMC and The Beastie Boys. ... American Recordings is a Los Angeles-based record label headed by record producer Rick Rubin. ... James Todd Smith (born January 14, 1968) is an American hip hop artist better known by his stage name, LL Cool J (Ladies Love Cool James). He is best known for romantic ballads like I Need Love as well as hardcore rap like I Cant Live Without My Radio... The Beastie Boys as depicted on the cover of their 1992 album Check Your Head. ... Slayer is an American thrash metal band, founded in Huntington Park (not Huntington Beach as has often been reported), California in 1982 by Tom Araya (bass guitar, vocals), Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman (guitars) and Dave Lombardo (drums). ... For the American football (soccer) player, see Landon Donovan. ... Aerosmith is a long-running classic rock band, originally forming in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1970s. ... The Very Best of Sheryl Crow album cover Sheryl Suzanne Crow (born February 11, 1962 in Kennett, Missouri, USA) is an American blues rock singer, guitarist and songwriter. ... Roy Orbison at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1987. ... The Red Hot Chili Peppers is a Californian rock band who combined aspects of funk, punk rock, metal, and hip hop, spearheading the funk metal movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s. ... John R. Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was a vastly influential American country music singer, guitarist and songwriter. ... Slipkont. ...

Rubin, using the artist's Bang and early MCA albums as a springboard, encouraged Diamond to keep writing material over the course of a year. Once the two collaborators had plenty of strong material at their disposal, Rubin put together some of the same musicians he had used for Johnny Cash's American Recordings releases, including Tom Petty sidemen Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, and encouraged Diamond to play guitar himself in the studio for the first time in over 25 years. Tom Petty on the cover of Damn the Torpedoes. ... Michael (Mike) Campbell (born February 1, 1950 in Panama City, Florida) is a guitarist and record producer, best known for his work with Tom Petty. ... Benjamin Montmorency Tench III (born September 7, 1953, Gainesville, Florida) is an American keyboardist. ...

The end result, 12 Songs, ended up being one of Diamond's most successful and critically acclaimed studio albums in years, debuting at #4 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. Rubin's influence would extend beyond the recording sessions, as the subsequent tour behind the album found Diamond using tougher-sounding arragements of his classic songs with his longtime backing band, and playing more guitar onstage than he had done since the Hot August Night era.

Track listing

1. "Oh Mary"
2. "Hell Yeah"
3. "Captain of a Shipwreck"
4. "Evermore"
5. "Save Me a Saturday Night"
6. "Delirious Love"
7. "I'm on to You"
8. "What's It Gonna Be"
9. "Man of God"
10. "Create Me"
11. "Face Me"
12. "We"
13. "Men Are So Easy"(*)
14. "Delirious Love" (featuring Brian Wilson(*)

(*) - Bonus tracks featured on a special edition of the album. Brian Wilson, 1988 Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942, in Hawthorne, California) is an American pop musician, best known as a founding member of and the main producer, composer, and arranger for The Beach Boys. ...

Extended Copy Protection

In November 2005, it was revealed that Sony BMG was distributing albums with Extended Copy Protection or XCP, a controversial feature that automatically installed rootkit software on any Microsoft Windows machine upon insertion of the disc. In addition to preventing the CD's contents from being copied, it was also revealed that the software reported the users' listening habits back to Sony and also exposed the computer to malicious attacks that exploited insecure features of the rootkit software. Though Sony refused to release a list of the affected CDs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation identified 12 Songs as one of the discs with the invasive software. Ongoing events • Abramoff-Reed gambling scandal • Al Jazeera bombing memo • Avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak • Black sites scandal • Conservative leadership race (UK) • Fuel prices • Irans nuclear program • Jilin chemical plant explosions • Kashmir earthquake • Malawi food crisis • Malaysian prisoner abuse scandal • New Delhi bombings investigation • Niger food crisis • North Indian cyclone... Bertelsmann is a transnational media corporation founded in 1835, based in G tersloh, Germany. ... XCP-Aurora Extended Copy Protection (XCP) is a software package developed by the British company First 4 Internet and sold as a copy protection or digital rights management (DRM) scheme for compact discs. ... A rootkit is a set of software tools frequently used by a third party (usually an intruder) after gaining access to a computer system. ... Microsoft Windows is a series of operating environments and operating systems created by Microsoft for use on personal computers and servers. ... The EFF uses the blue ribbon as symbolism for their Free Speech defense. ...

By December 2005, Sony BMG had remastered and repressed 12 Songs and all other albums released with the XCP software as standard, non-enhanced, non-copy-protected CD's. Ongoing events • 2005 Kuomintang visits to Mainland • Bill C-38 (Canada gay marriage) • German Visa Affair 2005 • Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan • Fuel prices • Election of OAS Secretary General • Stanislav Gross scandal in Czech republic Upcoming events Deaths in May May 3: Jagjit Singh Aurora May 3: Don Canham May...

External links

• Are You Affected By Sony-BMG's Rootkit? (November 9, 2005) from Electronic Frontier Foundation