Harry Nilsson: Nilsson Schmilsson : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Even before Harry Nilsson scored a hit, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, in 1968, proclaimed the Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based songwriter as their favorite American singer. This was shortly after the Monkees recorded his cute and cleverly nasty "Cuddly Toy" but before Three Dog Night reached the Top Ten in 1969 with a cover of his lyrically despairing "One," which Aimee Mann and others have subsequently rendered evergreen. As a singer, Nilsson got lucky when his wistful rendition of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin' " became the theme for Midnight Cowboy.

Blessed with a tenor that could make angels weep and the smarts to know how to use it, Nilsson nevertheless failed to ignite the album charts until 1971's Nilsson Schmilsson. The hit single was Nilsson's powerful cover of "Without You," a previously overlooked cut written and first recorded by Badfinger. The rest of the album established Nilsson as a talent of unusual depth and scope: Years before public escapades with future drinking buddy Lennon confirmed Nilsson's personal excesses, Schmilsson plays like a study in bipolar disorder. Beginning with the manic "Gotta Get Up" and continuing with the equally breezy and busy "Driving Along," the mood takes a dip with the skeletal and enchanted "Early in the Morning" before plummeting with the bluesy "Down." Side Two starts out with the Caribbean giddiness of "Coconut," then goes bonkers with "Jump Into the Fire," a wailing seven-minute bass-and-drum tantrum recently covered live by dance rock's LCD Soundsystem. On the albums that followed, Nilsson ventured into standards and ragged rock, but he would never again be this consistent or popular.