History Music / HarryNilsson

* BadassBeard: His pride and joy since the early '70s.

* NonActorVehicle: ''Son of Dracula''. Nilsson was the second choice after Music/DavidBowie turned it down. Most fans think he acquits himself fairly well as an actor and is the ''only'' worthwhile thing in the whole movie.

In the first part of TheSixties Nilsson pursued a music career while he also held a steady job as a computer programmer at a California bank. After years of writing songs and recording demos, he was signed to Creator/RCARecords in 1967. His work earned the admiration of Music/TheBeatles (Music/RingoStarr eventually became a close friend), which needless to say did [[ColbertBump wonders for his own notability]]. His big commercial break came when his cover of "Everybody's Talkin'" (originally written by Fred Neil) was featured in the film ''Film/MidnightCowboy'', earning him a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in the process. He would win the same award again a few years later for his performance of what has now become a pop standard; "Without You" (written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger).

* CreditsGag: The 1968 film ''Skidoo'' has Nilsson [[ListSong singing the entire end credits sequence]]: actors, crew members, and legal disclaimers. All of it.

* MeaningfulName: ''Aerial Ballet'' was named after the highwire circus act of his [[UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}} Swedish]] grandparents.

* OneWordTitle: "One", often [[RefrainFromAssuming referred to as]] "One Is The Loneliest Number" instead.

* WordSchmord: This should be pretty obvious by now...

** ''Nilsson Schmilsson'' added extensive rock elements to his music for the first time, culminating with the EpicRocking of "Jump Into The Fire".

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Harry_Nilsson_3935.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:"Everybody's talkin' at me..."]]

** The bouncy and wholesome-sounding "Cuddly Toy" was an obvious choice for Davy Jones to sing when Music/TheMonkees covered it. As for the lyrics, they're vague enough to be interpreted in different ways (some quite sinister), but they're plainly about some sort of unwholesome sexual encounter.

* EpicRocking: "Jump Into the Fire". That is, the album version.

* HealingPotion: Apparently, if you put a lime in a coconut and drink 'em both up, your belly-ache should be gone in the morning. [[HereWeGoAgain Only, not]].

* LoopedLyrics: "Jump Into The Fire"

* NonstandardPrescription: In the song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbgv8PkO9eo "Coconut"]] a woman puts lime in the coconut and drinks them both up, and gets a bellyache. She calls her doctor (wakes him up) and the doctor prescribes... [[HairOfTheDog lime in the coconut, drink them both together.]] Then she'll feel better.

* PowerBallad: "Without You" was an early attempt to mix ingredients that later became PowerBallad mainstays.[[note]]solo piano intro, musical buildup, prominent drums at key moments, vocal starting out soft then getting more forceful toward the end. Really the only thing keeping it from being the UrExample is lack of a guitar solo.[[/note]] What makes it interesting is that Nilsson was approaching it from the opposite direction: a pop guy adding heavier elements to his music.

* ''Nilsson Schmilsson'' (1971)

* WordSaladLyrics: "Puget Sound"

* PunBasedTitle: ''Duit on Mon Dei'' is a riff on the motto of the British Monarchy, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieu_et_mon_droit "Dieu et mon droit"]]. Apparently this began as an inside joke among Music/TheBeatles during the Apple Corps era, then Ringo put it on the cover of his ''Ringo'' album.

* AlbumIntroTrack: ''Pandemonium Shadow Show'' opens with Nilsson attempting a circus ringmaster-type introduction. ''Aerial Ballet'' has him doing a tap-dancing routine. ''Duit on Mon Dei'' starts off with a rough demo version of "Jesus Christ You're Tall", which he recorded a finished version of on the next album, ''Sandman''. ''Flash Harry'' opens with a song ''about'' Nilsson, written and performed by Creator/EricIdle.

* ShoutOut: Music/DavidBowie mentions Harry in his dialogue with Music/BingCrosby for the intro to "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy".

** Then there's the odd case of "Marry Me a Little". After it was cut from the original run of ''{{Theatre/Company}}'', Music/StephenSondheim arranged for Nilsson to record it so he could give a copy to Judy Prince, the wife of producer Harold Prince, who'd loved the song, as a Christmas present (Nilsson even sings "Merry Christmas, Judy. Have a Happy New Year too" at the end). Despite the obviously limited quantity of the recording, a dub of the acetate eventually circulated among Nilsson fans, and a version taken from the master tapes finally got an official release in the ''RCA Albums Collection'' BoxedSet in 2013. The consensus opinion is that it's [[BetterThanCanon just as good as what Nilsson was releasing publicly]] at the time, and if he'd given it a wide release it might've been a career highlight for both him and Sondheim.

When a relative newcomer during the late [[TheSixties 1960s]], Nilsson earned the admiration of Music/TheBeatles (Music/RingoStarr eventually became a close friend), which needless to say did [[ColbertBump wonders for Nilsson's own notability]]. His big commercial break came when his cover of "Everybody's Talkin'" (originally written by Fred Neil) was featured in the film ''Film/MidnightCowboy'', earning him a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in the process. He would win the same award again a few years later for his performance of what has now become a pop standard; "Without You" (written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger).

* WeUsedToBeFriends: George Aliceson Tipton was Nilsson's arranger up until ''Nilsson Schmilsson'', when he abruptly quit after recordng just one song. More than just an arranger, though, Tipton was a musical mentor and cohort for Nilsson (more than one person has compared the Nilsson/Tipton partnership to George Martin and Music/TheBeatles). Up to his death in 2016 Tipton steadfastly refused to discuss his work with Nilsson or why they split up. The best guess is that there was some dispute over credits and money, plus Nilsson's dissolute lifestyle making him harder to work with.

* VocalEvolution: Unfortunately, not the positive kind.

* ''Flash Harry'' (1980)

* ChristmasSongs: "Remember (Christmas)" is a perennial selection on Christmas compilations... despite having no Christmas connotations whatsoever in its lyrics (there ''are'' some sleigh bells in the instrumental bridge, though).

** And on the receiving end too, with the tribute album ''For The Love of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson'', and The Walkmen did a track-for-track version of ''Pussy Cats''.

* PleaseDontLeaveMe: "[[CaptainObvious Don't Leave Me]]".

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Harry_Nilsson_3935.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Everybody's talkin' at me..."]]

* HeavyMeta: "The Story of Rock and Roll", which he wrote but never formally recorded. It was a minor hit for The Turtles in 1968 (Music/TheMonkees also made an unfinished attempt at it).

** He wrote and recorded an original Christmas song called "Give, Love, Joy" for the ''[[{{ComicStrip/Ziggy}} Ziggy's Gift]]'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBLWCsI4ig8 TV special]] in 1982. Six years later he contributed a few brief cover versions of holiday standards to an [[http://www.nilssonschmilsson.com/page-the-presence-of-christmas-dove-cd.html audiobook anthology]] of various stories called ''[[PunBasedTitle The Presence of Christmas]]''. It's ultra-rare and those who've heard it don't have much good to say about it. One Amazon.com review calls it [[SoBadItsHorrible "so bad it's almost embarrassing".]]

** Then there's the odd case of "Marry Me a Little". After it was cut from the original run of ''{{Theatre/Company}}'', Creator/StephenSondheim arranged for Nilsson to record it so he could give a copy to Judy Prince, the wife of producer Harold Prince, who'd loved the song, as a Christmas present (Nilsson even sings "Merry Christmas, Judy. Have a Happy New Year too" at the end). Despite the obviously limited quantity of the recording, a dub of the acetate eventually circulated among Nilsson fans, and a version taken from the master tapes finally got an official release in the ''RCA Albums Collection'' BoxedSet in 2013. The consensus opinion is that it's [[BetterThanCanon just as good as what Nilsson was releasing publicly]] at the time, and if he'd given it a wide release it might've been a career highlight for both him and Sondheim.

* SelfPlagiarism: His version of "I Don't Need You" (not the original, but released before the KennyRogers version) has an arrangement that blatantly copies "Without You".

** Then there's the odd case of "Marry Me a Little". After it was cut from the original run of ''{{Theatre/Company}}'', Creator/StephenSondheim arranged for Nilsson to record it so he could give a copy to Judy Prince, the wife of producer Harold Prince, who'd loved the song, as a Christmas present (Nilsson even sings "Merry Christmas, Judy. Have a Happy New Year too" at the end). Despite the obviously limited quantity of the recording, a dub of the acetate eventually circulated among Nilsson fans, and a version taken from the master tapes finally got an official release in the ''RCA Albums Collection'' box set in 2013. The consensus opinion is that it's [[BetterThanCanon just as good as what Nilsson was releasing publicly]] at the time, and if he'd given it a wide release it might've been a career highlight for both him and Sondheim.

-->You bury me or I bury you?