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Neil Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Additionally, Diamond received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and in 2011 was an honoree at The Kennedy Center. On the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, he has had eleven No. 1 singles: "Cracklin' Rosie", "Song Sung Blue", "Longfellow Serenade", "I've Been This Way Before", "If You Know What I Mean", "Desiree", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "America", "Yesterday's Songs", "Heartlight", and "I'm a Believer". "Sweet Caroline" is played frequently at sporting events, and has become an anthem for the Boston Red Sox.

Diamond says when he was 16 years-old ,still in high school he spent a number of weeks at Surprise Lake Camp, a camp for Jewish children in upstate New York, there he was introduced like many of the campers to the performance of folk singer Pete Seeger who performed a small concerts. Dimond seeing the widely recognized singer perform, and watching other children singing songs for Seeger that they wrote themselves, had an immediate effect on him, who then became aware of the possibility of writing his own songs. "And the next thing, I got a guitar when we got back to Brooklyn, started to take lessons and almost immediately began to write songs," he said. Diamond adds his attraction to songwriting was the "first real interest" he had growing up, helping him release his "frustrations".

Diamond used his newly-developing skill writing lyrics to write poetry. By writing poems for girls in school, he soon learned it often won their hearts. His male classmates took note and began asking him to write poems for them which they would sing and use with equal success. He spent the summer following his graduation as a waiter in the Catskills resort area. There he first met Jaye Posner, who would, years later, become his wife.