Neil Diamond is a music icon who has shaped generations of listeners. His songs are still everywhere. Sweet Caroline alone could fill a stadium, and everyone knows every word. So when I heard about a new film centered on his music, I assumed it would be another nostalgia-driven documentary. That’s not what Song Sung Blue is doing.

This film comes at Neil Diamond from a completely different angle. It tells the story of a real couple from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who make their living performing as a Neil Diamond tribute act known as Lightning and Thunder. These are the kinds of performers you’ve seen before. The Elvis impersonators. The Dolly Partons. The Michael Jacksons. People who keep an artist’s music alive by sharing it with their local community. What makes Song Sung Blue different is that it is not really about Neil Diamond at all. It’s about what his music means to the people who love it.

Hugh Jackman stars as Mike, and honestly, he looks a lot like Neil Diamond. More importantly, he can sing and act, and that matters here. The real surprise for me was Kate Hudson. I knew Hugh Jackman was a shoe in for this role, but I was not prepared for Kate Hudson to match him note for note, emotionally and musically. The two of them together weren’t a pairing I would have chosen, but they absolutely work as a couple whose lives revolve around each other and their music.

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Song Sung Blue is based on a true story, with some necessary changes to shape it into a film that works on screen. There is music in it, but I wouldn’t call it a musical in the traditional sense of the word. So, I think that will make it a lot more accessible to a lot more people.

The question is, is this a movie for you, especially with it arriving right as people are looking for something meaningful to watch over the holidays? Is this a Christmas theater pick, or is this one you wait to catch on streaming? That’s what we’re getting into today. If this sounds interesting, please give this review a thumbs up, subscribe for more, and let’s get into it.

Story Summary

The film opens with Mike at an AA meeting on his twentieth sober birthday as he sings Song Sung Blue. This opening is the kind of opening that nails how to introduce a character. It is such a great choice because it instantly sets us up to understand his life, his struggles, and his emotional state. That clarity matters because a good film needs a strong foundation within those first ten minutes, and Song Sung Blue hits that note! … I seem to be making a lot of puns lately! From there we see Mike performing as “Lightning” at a county fair with other impersonators, which is where he meets Claire, and they click. They build an act together with Claire calling herself Thunder, and their story takes off from there.

First Impressions

The movie does a really nice job of showing us how two very similar, yet different, people learn to work and live together. Their lives have some huge ups and downs. Their struggles are not easy, they disagree, they make music together, and they build this incredible love story that feels like a look inside of how to make a real relationship work. However, this is not a romance, it’s a love story, and Song Sung Blue is a terrific film for showing us the difference between romance and love on screen.

Cast and Character Development

What helps to sell this is that Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson have so much chemistry that it is ridiculous. They look like two people who genuinely enjoy each other and who are delighted that the other person exists in this world. You can feel the warmth between them. You can feel the shared humor. You can feel the partnership. Their energy is infectious, and it carries the story forward in a way that makes you root for them even when things get difficult. I don’t know why this feels so rare lately, but it is so nice to see two actors who simply disappear into their parts and bring the characters to live in such a realistic way.

What Is Tribute Art?

One of the things I genuinely loved about this film is how it treats tribute art. I grew up in a family of musicians. We were always playing music, writing original songs, or playing cover music. So I have always understood that special relationship between an original artist and the people who carry their music forward.

Tribute artists are often treated like a joke, especially in movies. They are usually played for laughs. They feel exaggerated, fake, or reduced to a costume instead of a person. Sometimes that happens in real life too. Song Sung Blue treats them with respect and honors their lives as working musicians.

In turn, Mike and Claire are not pretending to be Neil Diamond. They are honoring him. The film asks an important question without ever spelling it out. What does it mean to play someone else’s music for a living? How do you hold that legacy with respect while still making it meaningful to your own life? How do the people around you respond to that choice?

As Lightning and Thunder perform Neil Diamond’s songs, you start to see how communal music is and how playing covers or being a tribute artist builds upon the foundation of the original artist. You hear Neil Diamond in every note as well as both Mike and Claire in how they perform his music. You hear the audience singing along. It becomes this shared experience that belongs to everyone in the room. The film captures this so well. It shows how music evolves and travels through communities and generations, and how it becomes something larger than one person.

The Reality of Making Art and Making a Living

The other thing this film gets absolutely right is the honesty of what it means to be a struggling artist, at any level, in any situation. The grind is real. Making art is one thing, but making a living while doing it is another and it’s not easy.

This story understands the economic reality of creativity. You see what it means for a family both emotionally and financially. You see the constant balancing act of paying the rent while holding onto the thing you love. At the same time, you also see the reward that comes with being on stage, connecting with an audience that feels every note and word.

Song Sung Blue feels like a working-class story inside of an ordinary life full of realistic struggles. What’s great is that their personal experiences are also reflected in the themes of Neil Diamond’s music. His songs have always been about ordinary lives and the tangible emotional experiences of being alive. By watching Mike and Claire together, you get this intimate look into an ordinary life through extraordinary eyes, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Why Neil Diamond’s Music Still Connects

If you grew up listening to Neil Diamond, or even if you only know a few of his songs, the music in this film hits you in a very specific way. The filmmakers really did pick the right songs and placed them at the right moments. This is not like watching a concert film where you just get a greatest hits playlist dropped on top of a story.

What they did instead was choose songs that actually fit what was happening emotionally in the moment. They found a really nice way to update the feeling of the music while still keeping it classically Neil Diamond. The lyrics are spot on, the melodies are intact, but depending on what’s happening on stage or in the story, there’s a little more energy infused into the performances.

They even blend a few songs together into small medleys, which gives you a sense of variety without stopping the story cold. You might be in a performance, or a rehearsal, or a transitional moment, and suddenly you’re hearing different parts of Neil Diamond’s catalog woven together in a way that feels natural.

The result is that you get a really strong selection of his music. You get a good sense of the kind of music he wrote and how it translated into real people’s lives. That, to me, is exactly how someone becomes a musical icon like Neil Diamond. His music doesn’t just exist on records. It lives inside people.

Where the Film Stretches the Story

Now, I do want to acknowledge that this review is very positive, and that’s because I really liked this movie. At the same time, there were some things that didn’t work quite as well.

One of the challenges with a film like this is that it’s based on real people and real lives. The story we see on screen seems to take place over just a couple of years, but Mike and Claire actually performed together for a very long time. They were together for decades. There is simply no way to fit all of that into a single film without some creative rewriting of their lives.

The movie runs a little over two hours, and honestly, there are some areas that could have been trimmed. I’m not sure why so many films lately feel the need to go over the two-hour mark, but when you’re telling the story of musical performers, you do have to allow extra time for performances, rehearsals, and stage moments. That’s part of the story, and it’s part of the experience fans are expecting.

Those musical moments do bulk out the film more than the narrative would normally support. Even so, I think the film mostly gets it right because the performances are strong enough to entertain us during that extra run time.

Recommendation

So is Song Sung Blue ticket worthy? For most people, I think yes. Even though it is not a spectacle film, the performances really well done, especially when Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson are singing together.

If you like Neil Diamond, you will enjoy this film. If you like music-driven stories, you will enjoy this film. Most important of all, if you are looking for a positive, heartfelt story that is uplifting without being preachy, you will enjoy this film. I also think that musicians will enjoy this film because you can’t help but to see a bit of yourself in Mike and Claire.

However, for people who don’t like Neil Diamond’s music you might want to wait for streaming on this one.

Final Thoughts

So, what did you think of Song Sung Blue? Are you a Niel Diamond fan? If so, what’s your favorite song? For me, it’s Forever in Blue Jeans because that was one of my mom’s favorite songs to sing. However, after seeing this film, I have a whole new appreciation for Holy Holy and I have been listening to it over and over in my car as I drive around!

If you enjoyed this review, please give it a like and subscribe for more. You can also visit my YouTube channel at @ErinUnderwood for more videos.