August, 1969: Harry Nilsson’s 4th record
Harry is released, placing the immensely talented and idiosyncratic singer-songwriter on the Billboard Charts for the first time. With the modest success of
Harry and a well-received performance of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” featured prominently in the film
Midnight Cowboy, Harry Nilsson is primed for a breakthrough. How does he proceed? By entering the studio to record an album of songs penned by little known American songwriter Randy Newman. Idiosyncratic, huh?
Composed almost entirely of piano and vocal tracks,
Nilsson Sings Newman is an exceedingly intimate record that still manages to feel like a swing for the fences. Each song features an intricately arranged set of vocal overdubs that Nilsson uses to intensify passages, harmonize with himself, and provide counterpoints to the main melody of each song. Randy Newman plays all the piano parts on the album, and though his performance is far less flashy than Nilsson’s, his contributions are indispensable. From the delicate key brushes on “Dayton, Ohio 1903” to the thunderous, repetitive hammering of “The Beehive State”, Nilsson relies on Newman to set the mood for each piece.
Though Newman is integral to the sound of the record, the real star is Harry Nilsson’s vocal arrangement. Nilsson took six weeks to lay down overdub after overdub, layering voice track after voice track over the skeleton of Newman’s piano. The results of this labor are astounding. Feel yourself getting swept up in the energy of the climax of “The Beehive State”, in which distorted vocals answer each piano chord and the melody is joyously carried by 4 Harry Nilssons at once. Be floored and a little puzzled by the piano-less coda of “Living Without You”, in which Nilsson creates his own choir. Smile as Nilsson commands and then countermands the engineer in “So Long, Dad”: “Actually, I need more current voice, forget the one saying more first voice.” Each composition is intricate, powerful, with its own character defined by Nilsson’s arrangement.
As a songwriter, Randy Newman is known as a sterling ironist, biting in his use of cliché, grotesque in his use of character. But on Nilsson Sings Newman any misanthropy is cut by the sweetness of Harry Nilsson’s performance. It’s hard to embrace irony when confronted by the genuine power of his voice. And indeed, outside of “So Long, Dad”, “Love Story (You and Me)”, and “Cowboy”, the selections on the album tend toward the sincere and nostalgic. The plaintive grief on “Living Without You” is stirring, genuine, and perhaps unexpected from Randy Newman:
The milk truck hauls the sun up, the paper hits the door
The subway shakes my floor and I think about you
Time to face the dawning grey of another lonely day
It’s so hard living without you
I’ll allow “Living Without You” to stand for
Nilsson Sings Newman as a whole: a short, sweet triumph by two of the most talented players in American songwriting.
