American Idol News. Battle Over Song Choices for Neil Diamond Week.

At last the Famous Five can leave behind the influences of the past.

Dolly Parton. Mariah Carey. The strangely-trousered Lord Lloyd Webber.

Because this week they get to choose from the enormous lexicon of love of Neil Diamond.

You feel that Mr. Diamond also represents the past?

May you perish in a vat of vinegared beer.

They still sing “Sweet Caroline” at the end of every Boston Red Sox game.

And Mr. Diamond has a new album coming out. Any day now, in fact. Surely you have got used to all these new albums being released by the so-called mentors.

Can he possibly outsell David Cook’s “Analog Heart”?

Well, he has had Rick Rubin, a man as large as Tibet, producing his onrushing oeuvre.

Mr. Rubin has brought us the Beastie Boys. He even worked with the Dixie Chicks. How can he not propel Mr. Diamond back to his former glory?

Of course, some might feel that this is a glory last spotted somewhere around 1979 when he promised to be “Forever in Blue Jeans.”

I’m not sure any of us still in possession of our own teeth and faculties would choose to be the particular pieces of denim that Mr. Diamond chooses to cover his loins these days.

But it is worth considering that “Sweet Caroline”, for example, was released in 1969.

A year in which long hair and drugs besmirched the world like a plague of hedonistic locusts.

Perhaps it is not altogether surprising, then, that “Sweet Caroline” is, at the moment of penning this in the steamy vicinity of the Idol Theater, the choice of Jason Castro.

Jason will, quite naturally, slow the song down a little so that we can get some much-needed rest. He will also attempt to learn all the thirteen notes that go to comprise this epic psalm to, um, a girl called Caroline.

No one can guarantee that he will manage to remember all of those notes.

What can be guaranteed is that he will talk and dork his way through the evening like a web design student in a Marseille bordello.

The National Nervous Breakdown Society has this week been forced to issue an impassioned press release disowning Brooke White.

The Society feels that she is giving genuinely stressed people a rap not worthy of Kevin Federline.

Her constant weeping, wailing, proto-emoting, sobbing and prostrating herself on the nearest available furniture serves only to remind viewers of the fact that silent movies are running on the FX Channel at two in the morning.

Neil Diamond might have been at the height of his powers at the same time as Carole King, but he didn’t leave behind too much for Brooke to marinate at her piano.

Initially, she bit into the leg of another contestant in an attempt to make “I Am, I Said” her song.

However, when a disheveled, dirty-sneakered, saggy-eyed Idolchik explained that the second line of the chorus is “I Am, I Cried,” Brooke dissolved into floods of saline and had to be sedated on a chaise-longue for three hours while she sniffled stories about her favorite fluffy toys from her childhood.

On returning to whatever passes for her consciousness, Brooke was encouraged to select “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”.

Perhaps many of you would consider this a song that was made famous by some righteous siblings.

But, wait. It was beaten to a pulp by Mr. Diamond and his bosom buddy, Dolly Parton, in 1993.

Syesha Mercado was quite right to feel offended that, despite having given everything and then some more that was possibly borrowed from another artist for the night, she was still condemned to sit on the plank of elimination.

Fortunately, she has found a Neil Diamond song that she can coat with a little Broadway pathos. (Given that Broadway seems to be the direction the judges are likely to send her. Taking their usual 70% along the way.)

The song is “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, a tale of lovers who know that they have grown apart.

The strange thing about this composition is that Mr. Diamond and Ms. Streisand recorded it separately for their own albums before they ever recorded it together.

Even stranger is that Ice T and Tupac gave it new life on “Saturday Night Live”.

And what of the only twopack that matter?

The Archangel Archuleta wanted “I Am…I Said” even more than he wanted the little blonde fourteen-year-old in the audience to never again wave the sign that read “Lick These Lips, David.”

After all, he has the liptick under control.

There were those on and around the set who were desperate for him to choose the 1968 composition “Two-Bit Manchild.”

Others were secretly wishing he would choose “I Thank the Lord for The Nighttime.”

But, as usual, insanity has prevailed.

David understands that the average age of his voters is six and a half. Whether you look at it mentally or passportly.

So he is intending to lure them into a predictably overwrought version of the religiously-overtoned “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, which Mr. Diamond purloined from the British group, The Hollies.

Of course, there remain those who believe that this is merely a ploy on David’s part as he really intends to release this song with the slightly developed title “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Father.”

David Cook has tried to maintain his karma this week by ordering a tattoo identical to that which weighed down Carly Smithson’s right arm and chances.

David knows that Carly was a good one at heart and he feels the tattoo will keep him grounded just as others try to propel him towards one of Direct TV’s satellites.

For his Diamond song, David has selected, at least right now, “Beautiful Noise.”

He feels that, in some small artistic sense, and he is very keen on maintaining his artistic integrity, this song epitomizes the effect he wants his singing to have.

Of course, he will rock the baby just a little bit, just enough to make the casual listener believe that time hasn’t stood still and that the strange man in the glasses on CNN is not Barry Goldwater.

I can reveal that Mr. Diamond has already given David some important advice about his hair.

The Pond thanks Carla216 for illustrating the joys of the youthful voting public.