1977 · Behind the Songs
A grand-piano opening, a provocative lyric, and a radio first.
“Desirée” arrived in November 1977 as the second single from I’m Glad You’re Here with Me Tonight, the album Diamond cut with Four Seasons co-founder Bob Gaudio producing. Cash Box heard an “infectious intro on the grand piano” and declared Diamond “at the top of his form”; Record World noted that it “rocks lightly” and that the arrangement keeps the focus on what it called the provocative lyrics. The record did its job: number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 1 on the Easy Listening chart — Diamond’s fifth chart-topper there — and number 1 on Canada’s adult contemporary chart, with top-ten showings in Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa.
The song’s strangest footnote came nine months later. On the American Top 40 broadcast of August 26, 1978, Casey Kasem used “Desirée” for the show’s first-ever long-distance dedication — a listener’s request sent across the miles, a format that would become a weekly ritual of the program. It was a fitting fate for a record about wanting from afar: a studio single from late 1977, still traveling, still finding new ears a year later. The B-side, for the collectors, was “Once in a While.”