Done Too Soon

"Done Too Soon" is a song written, composed, and performed by Neil Diamond, and released on his 1970 album Tap Root Manuscript. Listed as Track 4 on Side One of the album, it was jointly arranged by Marty Paich and Lee Holdridge and jointly produced by Diamond and Tom Catalano.

Content

"Done Too Soon" is a song of mortality, divided, stylistically, into two sections, a fast-paced first part and a slower, more introspective second part.

Lyrics

The lyrics of "Done Too Soon" drop the following names, in order, in its fast-paced first part:

1. Jesus Christ, central figure of Christianity
2. Fanny Brice, American stage, screen, and radio comedian
3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer
4. Humphrey Bogart, American actor
5. Genghis Khan, Mongolian military-political conqueror-adventurer
6. H. G. Wells, British Victorian-era science-fiction writer
7. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Communist leader
8. Gunga Din, title character of the Rudyard Kipling poem
9. Henry Luce, American publisher, founder of Time Magazine
10. John Wilkes Booth, American actor, best remembered as the assassin of Abraham Lincoln
11. Alexander King (which one Diamond refers to is not specified)
12. Alexander Graham Bell, elocution teacher and technologist best remembered for his invention of the telephone
13. Ramakrishna, Indian mystic
14. Anna Whistler, mother of American-born, British-resident painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, as he immortalized her in "Arrangement In Grey And Black No. 1"
15. Patrice Lumumba, Congolese politician
16. Russ Colombo, American entertainer
17. Karl Marx, German philosopher
18. Chico Marx, American comedy actor
19. Albert Camus, French writer
20. Edgar Allan Poe, American writer
21. Henri Rousseau, French painter
22. Sholem Aleichem, Yiddish author and playwright
23. Caryl Chessman, American criminal
24. Alan Freed, American disc jockey
25. Buster Keaton, American silent-films actor

The slower, more introspective second part notes the commonalities between these twenty-five individuals. (Even though Gunga Din was a fictional character, he is listed with the other twenty-four because his name fits the syllabic count of the lyrics.) Those commonalities are these, as quoted from the lyrics:

They have sweated beneath the same sun

Looked up in wonder at the same moon

And wept when it was all done

For being done too soon

In this context, "being done too soon" means that all those whom Diamond identifies died before each of their times, with their lives's respective work unfinished, or both.

Music

The music of "Done Too Soon," which Diamond composed for his own baritone range, is in the key of A major.

The first couplets of each of the first part's two halves range in tone from A3 to A2, and the second couplets are primarily in the tone of Ab2, but rise to a single B3 note before returning to A3.

The second part starts with a couplet whose two lines have the tones E1-D2-D2-B2, and in toto, its music is almost elegiac in sound.

History

As of April 2015, the story of how Diamond had come to write and compose "Done Too Soon" was not clear.

Chart performance

"Done Too Soon" did not truly chart, because Diamond never actually released it as a single.

Notable cover versions

Also as of April 2015, "Done Too Soon" was not known to have been interpreted by any other artists than Diamond himself.

External links

• Full lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics