11 March 1972
I checked Harry Nilsson’s figures on a well-known streaming service, and was unsurprised to see that ‘Without You’ and ‘Everybody’s Talkin” were doing around five to ten times the numbers of his other songs. Even my awareness of him in the ’90s was just for those two tracks and little in the way of contemporary relevance; I see he actually died in February 1994 but I can’t say I was aware of that at the time. That said, perhaps I’m doing him an injustice and he was streaming quite a lot in the ’70s.
I’m not particularly looking forward to a re-listen to ‘Without You’. As I mentioned when contemplating Mariah Carey’s 1994 chart-topping version—number one in Ireland a mere four weeks after Nilsson’s death and yet not two events I associated—I’m not a fan of the song’s histrionic misery, and its Badfinger back-story really is best avoided. Nilsson here doesn’t come across as the maverick hellraising Lennon-drinking-buddy of ’70s rock lore. In the verses his voice is meek and tremulous like an X Factor winner. What’s more, on the chorus of ‘Without You’ Nilsson sounds like Chris De Burgh, and I mean that to hurt. And what do you know? Chris De Burgh did his own version of ‘Without You’ in 2008 and it sounds like Nilsson. There’s also a 1985 version of ‘Without You’ by Joe Dolan and I know you’ll want to hear that too. Get this song away from me.
