Neil Diamond: vocal
David Foster: keyboards

Produced by David Foster

Bryan and I wrote "It Should Have Been Me" for Spanish singer Julio Iglesias at the request of fellow Canadian David Foster, who was producing Julio at the time. As it turns out, Julio didn't like the song, and it remained "on the shelf" for another year or two until Davis decided to give it another try, this time with Neil Diamond.

Neil is one of the most successful singer-songwriters ever.  Along with Burt Bacharach and the Beatles, he virtually "owned" the US music charts in the 1960's. I greatly admire Neil's body of work, but I have to say I was quite disappointed with his interpretation of our song.  His phrasing is careless and chaotic, as if he was trying to emulate the nonchalant style that Frank Sinatra did so well. 

Unfortunately, despite Foster's excellent production, in my humble opinion Neil's vocal just doesn't make it.

A year after the Neil Diamond recording, Bryan Adams produced a second version of the song with singer Carly Simon. While I much prefer Carly's vocal over Neil's, it's Bryan's vocal on our basement demo that remains, for me, the definitive version of the song.  Hopefully one day Bryan will include this version on a "box set" retrospective.

When David Foster was in the studio with Neil Diamond, he phoned me to ask how I'd created the drum and cello sounds on my demo recording. 

Honest to God, I thought he was joking ... I mean, why would one of the world's most brilliant producers and arrangers want to know about sounds that were created in my little basement studio?

Now, twenty years later, listening to the demo, it really is one of the better "home studio" recordings that Adams and I produced, and I suspect David's request was 100% sincere.