NILSSON – "Without You"

I much prefer Mariah’s version precisely because of the greater bludgeon!

I’m going out on a limb here – this is one of my 10s.

The reason – we come back to the affective thing again. It just happened to coincide with my first big traumatic teenage breakup, and this song said how I felt more than any amount of Leonard Cohen could. It’s more than that though. The voice is terrific, and hits just the right note of despair without going overboard because it’s not to my mnd a song that responds at all well to belting, but that’s not enough in itself.

There’s something else though. In other versions – especially when they belt it – it seems to fall flat. I always thought there was some special magic about Nilsson’s version but I could never put my finger on it. But then, I’m not a musicologist. It was Howard Goodall’s recent series that cracked it for me – it’s the way the vocal is out of step with the harmonic progression. Or something. Sung in step it just becomes banal.

Also, a number of people I otherwise respect really hate it and that is a necessary – though not sufficient – requirement for a 10 from me!

This is one of my favourite songs ever, but I agree with the Lex. Overblown banshee ballads need a certain amount of ridiculousness to carry them off, which Mariah provides and Nilsson does not (I can’t recall the Badfinger version). It’s like eating grilled bacon when you’ve been frying it all your life.

I’m pleasantly surprised that people aren’t being more negative about this. Q magazine nominated Mariah Carey as one of the top ten worst singers of all time (controversial!) and if people hate Mariah it’s because of what she did to this song among others: vocal-gymnastic’ing all emotion out of it. And I had thought that people might apportion some of that to Nilsson, as if he could be blamed for starting the trend that led to aforementioned X Factor contestants doing grotesque Mariah impressions. I suppose when people trace a line from “You Really Got Me” to heavy rock, the Kinks get credit for it, but it would be harsh on Harry.

Personally I was very fond of this one without it becoming one of my particular favourites. Ashamed to say I’ve never heard the Badfinger original though. Noel Edmonds in his pre-breakfast show days was forever playing Nilsson material like “The Point” – remember that?

Number 2 Watch – “American Pie” stalled at 2 behind both this and “Son Of My Father”, and the New Seekers had their second No 2 with “Beg Steal or Borrow”.

Noel played some strange stuff in his early radio days; IIRC he was especially keen on Staveley Makepeace, and more about them anon…

This is a great song, no doubt, but it is searingly painful to listen to at the end – he sounds as if something within him is dying and you, as listener, can only listen, not help…sometimes I can’t listen to it, the odd time I do hear it on the radio, because it is so intense…

Urgh, this song is awful. Get someone else to sing the chorus, Nilsson, your voice is ear-splitting.

Then again, maybe I just hate this song because it was on one of my mom’s compilations, along with such unlistenable dreck as “Those Were the Days” and “Seasons in the Sun.”

10 for me as well, perfect execution.

On the whole I agree about original versions, but this should-have-been-a-ten-imho is one of the exceptions. As was another of my should-have-been-a-ten-imhos, Grapevine .

It’s something to do with adding something strikingly different, and executing it perfectly, so that something that was originally latent in the song is brought to the fore.

I can just about remember the Badfinger original, and also hearing this and realising that what I just described is exacly what happened.

Badfinger’s original sounds like a demo. (It also is a good example of the dangers of imitating the Beatles: even if you’re a decent band, you won’t do the Beatles as well as the Beatles.) This re-make sounds like what a very talented producer, singer, and group of studio musicians can do with a demo. In addition to what others have noted – Harry’s emotional tact, Perry’s care with the sonic details – I’d tip my hat to drummer Jim Gordon. His descending drum fill leading into the climactic “Can’t live” – the one where Harry jumps up an octave – is perfect.

No. McCartney gave them “Come And Get It” (and if his own take on Anthology 3 is anything to go by, the entire backing track) to give their career a boost. Nothing else in their catalogue really sounds like that, though; if anything the likes of “No Matter What” suggest a British Big Star.

I can’t live with any of this…

My experiences are similar to Jeff W’s – not quite the first record to make me cry (that was Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep – “Where’s your mama gone?” or possibly the spooky coda to Ernie) but, at the age of four, it soundtracked a terrifying dream in which our window cleaner kidnapped my mum and dad. Perhaps it was on the radio downstairs as my brother got ready for school.

Well into adulthood, it had the power to reduce me to mulch (much to my wife’s amusement; we once had to leave a bar in Brussels where it was playing on the jukebox). For years, I kept it at arm’s length, even as I became a bit of a fan of Nilsson’s other work, not daring to buy the album from which it came. Then, a couple of years ago, I picked up Nilsson Schmilsson cheap in Fopp. I got through track 6 (and track 11 too) without blubbing which maybe says something about what happens when you isolate the song at the centre of a web of accumulated memories and experience it as a fresh audio event – the act of deliberately listening to a record being so different to encountering it by chance.

Wasn’t around when this came out, but from later radio play I remember that it towered above other ballads from the period. Don’t rate Badfinger as Beatles imitators — their songs were beautifully made, and this one proves it. Nilsson sent it into orbit; an 8 or 9 definitely.

Yeah… at For The Love of Harry they’ve got 4 Nilsson versions (including Italian and Spanish), Badfinger’s version and NO Mariah Carey. You can listen to the entire songs and/or download all. And don’t forget the bizarre story that goes along with the song. BOTH authors (Ham & Evans of Badfinger) committed suicide by hanging.

Also sung by Fulham FC supporters. At least it was about 10 years ago, when I accompanied one of them to an away game at Wigan in the old 4th division; a horrible january day, an exposed terrace, halfway through the second half with Fulham 1-0 down the sleet began to drive directly into our faces, and about 50 fans began singing (at about half the pace of the recording) ‘I can’t live…’. Eerie, to say the least.

Jeff @ #8 echoes my own relationship to this song – one of the first to engage/overwhelm my emotions – I still find it affecting to this day – 8 or 9 for me

Amazed this got no mention:

Apparently, Badfinger were also in the same studio building as Harry (And JWebb, message #6, it seems), he said “oh do you want to hear this version I did of your song?”

I can only imagine the opengobs…

Have to add my voice to the “should have been a 10” chorus – I’ve been a defender of the laid-on-thick, more sentimental end of the spectrum since 1952 but this has any heartstring-tugging power that any of its predecessors his while being quite possibly *actually really good* at the same time. As you say, the arrangement is thoroughly modern, you could do it just this way in 2008 and no one would accuse you of wheeling out an obvious period piece. Almost 40 years, which is to say two generations, on. When you think about it, that’s truly phenomenal.

“Without You” was written by a couple of Welshmen who committed suicide (in separate incidents) and was sung by a guy who pretty much drunk himself to death. If that isn’t cheerful enough, Pans People were obliged to provide a routine for the record, which the girls have since admitted was one of their less sure-footed performances for the sole reason that it was entirely inappropriate, its chart position notwithstanding. They were much better tackling “The Resurrection Shuffle”, an absoluely belter of a record, which we should have been celebrating in this project.

But cards on the table, I thought “Without You” was one of the best number ones of the year, even though it is certainly a “downer”. I used to imagine poor old Harry standing on the old wooden chair in a damp empty bedsit, washing piling up in the sink, which naturally sports a dripping tap, mournfully connecting a skipping rope up to the light fitting…well, you get the idea. The record also has the benefit of not over-egging. Harry simply reprises the first part of the opening verse and then goes sobbing into the chorus and then…and then kicks the chair away. He can’t live. That will learn the bitch!

Just a word about “Coconut”, the bizarre follow up, also from “Schmilsson”. What a contrast that was. It was not a big hit and enabled me to wander around telling people to “put the lime in the cooking and see me in the morning” knowing that they wouldn’t have a clue about what I was referring to. Of course clever little Waldo did himself no good in this respect and I was (ahem!) referred. “Doctor! DOCCCC-TORR!!!!”

Happy Days!

Calm as a millpond opening verse, bridge into building chorus, building second verse, dramatic drum solo, all hell breaks loose in the next chorus, climactic payoff…we’re in Power Ballad territory here. Funny how I never twigged it before as I felt it was a purely ’80s onwards thing, but “Baker Street” and “All By Myself” fit the mould as well. Jeez! I must be stating the obvious to some, but that thought never occurred to me before.

Um, “Without Me” ?

There is also another close cousin, “Without Her”, as performed here by.. Kenny Everett! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wybv-O9vjKo

Balancing act: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/guys-and-dolls-new-seekers-beg-steal-or.html Thanks for reading, everyone!

Critic watch:

1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die, and 10,001 You Must Download (2010)
HarperCollins GEM (UK) – Single of the Year 1949-99 (1999)
John Peel (UK) – Peelenium: Four Tracks from Each Year of the Last Century (1999)
Mojo (UK) – The 100 Greatest Singles of All Time (1997) 101
Mojo (UK) – The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time (2000) 24
Paul Roland (UK) – CD Guide to Pop & Rock, 100 Essential Singles (2001)
Gilles Verlant and Thomas Caussé (France) – 3000 Rock Classics (2009)
Giannis Petridis (Greece) – 2004 of the Best Songs of the Century (2003)
Grammy Awards (USA) – Record of the Year Nominee