I Am... I Said

"I Am... I Said" took Diamond four months to compose.[3] One of his most intensely personal efforts, Neil Diamond told Mojo magazine July 2008 that this song came from a time he spent in therapy in Los Angeles. He said:

It was consciously an attempt on my part to express what my dreams were about, what my aspirations were about and what I was about. And without any question, it came from my sessions with the analyst.[5]

In the same month, he told Q that the song was written "to find [him]self" and added, "It's a tough thing for me to gather myself after singing that song."

But Diamond has also given another inspiration for this song: an unsuccessful tryout for a movie about the life and death of the comedian Lenny Bruce. Author David Wild interviewed Diamond for a 2008 book and he discussed how his efforts to channel Lenny Bruce evoked such intense emotions that it led him to spend some time in therapy.[6]

Critical opinion on "I Am... I Said" has generally been good, with Rolling Stone calling its lyric excellent in a 1972 review,[7] while The New Yorker used it to exemplify Diamond's songwriting opaqueness in a 2006 retrospective.[8] A 2008 Diamond profile in The Daily Telegraph simply referred to the song's "raging existential angst,"[9] and Allmusic calls it "an impassioned statement of emotional turmoil... very much in tune with the confessional singer/songwriter movement of the time."[1]

The song was not without its detractors, however. Humorist Dave Barry said:

Consider the song 'I Am, I Said,' wherein Neil, with great emotion, sings: 'I am, I said, to no one there. And no one heard at all, not even the chair.' What kind of line is that? Is Neil telling us he's surprised that the chair didn't hear him? Maybe he expected the chair to say, 'Whoa, I heard that!' My guess is that Neil was really desperate to come up with something to rhyme with 'there' and he had already rejected 'So I ate a pear,' 'Like Smokey The Bear,' and 'There were nits in my hair.'"[5]

The song garnered Diamond his first Grammy Awards nomination, for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.[1]

"I Am... I Said" was included on Diamond's November 1971 album Stones. The single version leads off the LP, while a reprise of the song, taken from midway to a variant ending with Diamond exclaiming "I am!", concludes.[7] It has also been included in live versions on Diamond's Hot August Night (from 1972, in a performance that Rolling Stone would later label "fantastically overwrought"[22]).

Checkmates, Ltd. released a version of the song on their 1971 album, Life.[23] Brooke White performed the song on American Idol's seventh season during its Neil Diamond week,[24] changing the lyric to replace New York City with her home state of Arizona.[24] Among the foreign versions are the Italian language "La casa degli angeli" ("House of the angels"), performed by Caterina Caselli in 1971's album "Una grande emozione" ("A great emotion"),[25] and by Dutchman Jan Rot on his 2008 album Hallelujah as "Zeg God... zeg ik", taking the title as someone who curses, while the Jewish word for God means 'I am'. The Brazilian singer Diana recorded the song as "Porque Brigamos" ("Why we argue") in 1972, with lyrics written by the composer and producer Rossini Pinto. The band Killdozer also covered the song on their 1987 album Little Baby Buntin'. Austrian singer Udo Wenders released a German version titled "Die Welt von heut" ("The world of today") on his 2012 album Ich finde dich. Jamaican reggae singer Mikey Spice released the album I Am I Said in 2014, including a cover of this song. John Gregory recorded an instrumental rendition of this song. There is also the Czech version "Krajem já šel" ("I went through the county"), realised in 1982 by the Czech singer Pavel Bobek. Country artist Billy Ray Cyrus released a version of the song on his 2020 EP "Singin Hills Sessions Volume 1".[26]

• Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs
• List of songs about Los Angeles
• List of songs about New York City