Seongah and Jimmy

Album: Melody Road (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • Neil Diamond got married for the third time in 2012 to his manager Katie McNeil. He penned this song for his Long Island native brother-in-law Jimmy and Korean sister-in-law, Senogah, after attending their engagement party. He explained to Jam! Music: "I was really moved to write that because, first of all, I knew I'd be playing that for Seongah and Jimmy and it ended up I played the record for them at their wedding dinner so that was a beautiful moment for me. It was worth the year-plus that I spent writing that song."

    "Her mom, who'd come over from Korea, started to cry when she heard her daughter's name, and Jimmy immediately piped in, 'This should be a Broadway show!' That was a lot of fun," Diamond continued. "I've never had that experience before, writing something for someone else and watching them experiencing it."
  • Diamond explained during a Reddit AMA the song tells "the story of a Korean girl and a boy from Long Island who fall in love, go to Brooklyn, move in together, get married, and live happily ever after without once sharing a common language or being able to converse with each other."

    He added: "It tells a story of the power of love, and how it transcends such mundane things as language and customs and country of origin."

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