taking sides: nilsson vs. newman

yes, I know, two great tastes that taste great together. but that's no fun. so which do you prefer?

newman has pretty much been all about recording his own material. nilsson is equal parts singer-songwriter and interpretive singer (not least of songs by newman). both had some hits as songwriters before they became proper solo artists--though newman's pre-fame catalogue is a lot deeper than nilsson's IMO. and nilsson of course ran out of creative steam well before newman did—if newman ever did (obviously, at times newman was running on fumes, but even his least impressive solo records have something magical on them, like "dixie flyer").

but would you trade nilsson schmillson for any one of newman's solo LPs? I wouldn't.

have at it!

forget schmillson, i'm all about the point

nilsson >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> newman

yeah this is basically like when i did nas v. pras and tom said "if only they didn't rhyme"

Objectively, I realize Randy Newman is more important to the history of pop music, at least as interpreted by rock critics, especially rock critics of the 1970s. Subjectively, there are no Randy Newman songs I love as much as "Without You," "Coconut," or "Everybody's Talkin'." Since Nilsson didn't write two of those, I'll give Newman credit for Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)," the one cover of his that I love. (I had no idea till I checked right now about the parentheses that that was originally written for Eric Burdon four years earlier...or so says Wikipedia.) But still, Nilsson.

Randy Newman any day of course but I really hate "Everybody's Talkin'" and just don't get what people see in Nilsson at all I guess. Formally speaking his songwriting is minor league compared to Newman's but there's nothing wrong w/minor league ball.

nilsson of course ran out of creative steam well before newman did

i think it's more like one of them actually gave a shit about his craft and career and one of them didn't. love 'em both to death. wonder what nilsson might've done if he'd clowned around even a little bit less. but then again maybe he wouldn't actually be nilsson in that case.

my favorite newman song, speaking of covers he should get credit for, is cilla black's "i've been wrong before."

I discovered both only in the last seven years, and while I play Newman to fulfill a sense of duty I play Nilsson more often because I love to hear the guy sing. I love his voice.

I was gonna say "singer who can't write songs" vs. "songwriter who can't sing" except Nilsson can write songs. "One"? "Without Her"? "He Needs Me"? He invented his own genre: avant-pap. And when he's dicking around it's still gorgeous.

Alfred otm

"Randy Newman any day of course but I really hate "Everybody's Talkin'" and just don't get what people see in Nilsson at all I guess."

this is so sad. coming from the lead singer of aerosmith. this is where i get to be all sad and disapointed like aerosmith is when i don't dig something he loves. i'm gonna go sit under a tree and cry.

"wonder what nilsson might've done if he'd clowned around even a little bit less."

but he made so much amazing music. and great records. sometimes i don't understand what people want from people.

yeah. so many great songs. and then some clowning too but so much quality.

but Nilsson's clowning produced some of his best work! As a personality he's more interesting, in a similar way that a Wilde bio >> Eliot

(love'em both though and have read many bios of each)

Randy Newman's albums drive me crazy because there is no situation where his music really fits perfectly, but I've seen him live three times and he totally slays

I was gonna say "singer who can't write songs" vs. "songwriter who can't sing" except Nilsson can write songs

and newman can sing, despite what he or anyone else might have told you.

i wasn't referring to nilsson's clowning on his records.

He can sing! Newman's literary sensibilities allow him to inflect a vocal like the one on "I Want You To Hurt Like I Do" with a resignation, pain, and malice that Nilsson couldn't.

i refuse to say anything mean about randy newman on here. its a vow i made a long time ago. not on threads about him. if he comes up in casual conversation on a NON randy newman thread than i can make fun of him. same with smashing corgans. and jack white stripe. and i already kinda feel bad for slamming the new paul single on the new paul is dead thread too. i'm keeping my hate away from the lovers.

did i mention that i LOVE harry nilsson records? some of the best production on earth. the best sound. i wish he had done more outside production stuff a la the nilsson house productions album he did for john randolph marr. i guess if i had a wish it would be that he made more awesome records for other people. dude had a great ear.

Randy Newman's albums drive me crazy because there is no situation where his music really fits perfectly, but I've seen him live three times and he totally slays

yeah I'm pretty sure nobody's ever seen a bad Randy Newman show, he's always amazing

Formally speaking his songwriting is minor league compared to Newman's

Whaaa? Can you elaborate on that? Really curious what you're hearing.

i can see that argued from a purely technical standpoint -- newman's a total craftsman. but gimme a killer dreamy melody over all the artifice in the world

About 6 years ago I decided to listen to both of these guy's records and after a lot of frustration I came out not liking either. I haven't gone back and I probably should, but most of what I heard was goofing around, almost tin-pan alley. I dunno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8QHh93Ay6U

Seems to be the received wisdom that Nilsson wasted his talents, based on how few albums / music he made after leaving RCA. But look at how many albums he did make! And it was pure luck he didn't get dropped (thank John Lennon)

I haven't read the book but I did see the doc, and it did seem that he had a happy life at the end.

I know "Without Her" of course, but what does he segue into at 2:20? ("if i could link your arm in mine...")

here you go:

harry nilsson - without her & mrs. muir's lovesong (1969) ..."if i could link your arm in mine," he sings, “the tropic sun, the emerald surf, the fleecy clouds ...

I know it's from "The Ghost & Mrs. Muir" (specifically, the last episode from the first of two seasons, "The Music Man"), but does that song have a name, and does it appear anywhere else?

("Mrs. Muir's Lovesong" as far as i can tell is just what that blogger chose to call it)

does it appear anywhere else?

Not to my knowledge. Refusing to take sides in this debate btw.

The credits on that ep have "Without Her" W&M Nilsson, "If Only" Words Tom August, Music Nilsson & Bill Martin.

(Bill Martin as in Martin/Coulter of Bay City Rollers fame?)

No, Bill Martin, crony of Mike Nesmith, wrote some songs for the Monkees and two (or three) on "Harry"

Fair enough.

In other news, I was investigating something that had bugge me for years:

Long time back, 1978 or thereabouts, Cilla Black did "I'll take a Tango", which is credited to Alex Harvey, and I wondered if it was the "Sensational" AH, as it's very tongue-in-cheek and reeks of his sense of humour. Just found that Nilsson did it as well, which is probably how Cilla got to find it.

Anyway, thanks to the internet, I find it's a different AH.

Both are so great. There are some Nilsson outtakes (outtakes!) that are some of my most favorite music ever. And I like his slow droning stoned piano playing, how he will write a song that is just two chords slowly see-sawing back and forth, and dance all over it w his voice.

Newman, tho, is pretty great. The handful of records I have a wonderful (the early ones). Some of his songs are next level, but it's too bad that his voice gets in the way. It is so idiosyncratic, the first time I heard his version of "Mama Told Me Not to Come", I didn't even recognize it as that song. It was like some other song, some Randy Newman thing, rather than the big hit song that it sounded like. I don't I'm explaining that well, does anyone get what I'm saying here?

Whereas Harry can sing a song and you think "I don't care if he wrote it or not, he made it".

i can see that argued from a purely technical standpoint

I'm curious what that argument would be because idgi at all. How are Newman's songs technically or formally superior to Nilssons?

hmm.. someone like areo who's more conversant with the actual art of songwriting can probably answer this better than me. but i grabbed just a random favorite nilsson track like 'i guess the lord must be in new york city' and the basic core is just two alternating major chords. (I IV?) and on the bridge they switch to a tonic (?) for a bit, and that's basically it. On top of that you have some strings, but they're just swooping around, and you have a banjo, but its just picking around the same progression.

And the melody basically dances right along with the chords -- striding up the major thirds, resolving on the fourth, then maybe futzing around up in the seventh in the bridge.

I'm rusty as hell and have a bad ear, so i'm probably getting a bunch wrong here. But in a sense there's almost nothing impressive going on at all. On the other hand, there are lots of crappy melodies you could write on top of that progression, and the melody he has isn't crappy at all, but spectacular. And the way it lifts off in the bridge surprising in all the right ways.

Lyrically again, we've got rhyming sorrow with tomorrow repeatedly, and nowhere and prayers, and almost no detail, just general sentiment.

But for general sentiment, the striking 'for the first time, i'll breathe free here in New York City' is great, and the plainspoken precision of 'ain't it wonderful to be / where i've always wanted to be.'

I think this is a fantastic song, but its also not one where you can point to anything particularly showy or impressive except it just works right and feels right.

not going to try to run thru any given randy newman tune, but he's almost the polar opposite -- very arch and knowing, lots of 'craft' and movement in the harmonies, less of a knack for a single melodic line, extremely specific lyrics, but sung through at least one layer of 'voiced' distance, etc.

feel like Nilsson doesn't do the "singing in character" thing that Newman does. When Harry assumes a role in a song it's always pretty clownish and silly a la Coconut

I think this is a fantastic song, but its also not one where you can point to anything particularly showy or impressive except it just works right and feels right.

yeah, to me that's a higher level of songwriting. A think a song like "One" is perfect and blows away anything Newman has ever done, but admittedly I'm not that familiar with his work because I could never get into him. Anyway, I don't know why we would discount melody. If the melody is spectacular then the song is spectacular, right?

yeah, "One" being written around a dial-tone is A+ songwriting imho

Anyway, I don't know why we would discount melody. If the melody is spectacular then the song is spectacular, right?

― wk, Tuesday, September 3, 2013 1:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure. i like nilsson a bunch and hope that that came though -- i was trying to expand on why from a 'purely technical' standpoint there's an argument newman is superior, bearing in mind that its a pretty ridiculous and skewed set of metrics to begin with

yeah, I gotcha. I was hoping to get an analysis/defense of newman's songwriting out of someone because I never got the appeal.

love both these dudes a great deal. i have sentimental attachments to Newman's 2nd, 3rd & 4th records that might give him a slight edge.

oddly i don't care all that much for Nilsson Sings Newman.

feel like Nilsson doesn't do the "singing in character" thing that Newman does. When Harry assumes a role in a song it's always pretty clownish and silly a la Coconut

Big disagree here, "Girlfriend" and "Good Old Desk" and "Without You" and "Without Her" are all coming from such different places, different "characters", though they might not have the spinning moral compass of Newman's characters, Nilsson is the most able singer when it comes modulating his performance to just the right amount of self-awareness

oddly i don't care all that much for Nilsson Sings Newman.

A very over-underrated record imo

I don't think a harmonic analysis is a good starting point for assessing a songwriter's worth, though I must admit Newman's harmonic sensibilities and his piano playing are My Two Favourite Things About Him

Some songs Nilsson is near schizophrenic w the vocal overdubs. He doesn't sing in character so much as he sings in characters. Then there's The Point, where plays the narrator and various characters from the story. Otherwise the character is his own performance, which he draws out through lackadaisical fourth-wall mischief. I like in "Joy" where he starts realizing the blandness of the lyrics and just starts heckling himself.

Randy Newman's characters are sort of isolated in their individual songs. There's an underlying self-effacing humor that comes through the music and I think I find him funnier. He seems more into exploring his darker side.

Also Nilsson has gotten lots of props as of late, whereas I still haven't run into a single other person that likes Randy Newman irl.

yeah Newman really assumes a point of view and commits to it, Nilsson's usually got this fourth-wall breaking goofiness to his schtick (a la the Flying Saucer Song)

I still haven't run into a single other person that likes Randy Newman irl.

When I saw Toy Story, my little cousins were looking questioningly up at me like "is this what adult music sounds like? yucko"

haha i kind of have that reaction to more 'classic' newman too. meanwhile my nilsson love is unbounded.

i like newman and think he's very good at what he does but ultimately i think he's lost to the dark side, lol.

Whaaa? Can you elaborate on that? Really curious what you're hearing.

other people've gone over this already but compositionally Randy Newman can basically do anything. If you play at all, you can sit down with some Randy Newman sheet music and throw the lyrics out the window and just go "oh...wow...that's really cool." There's New Orleans jazz moves colliding with all kinds of Golden Era of Standards stuff (Gershwin/Ellington/Cole Porter/et al) plus all the soundtrack chops he gets from his dad - the songwriting is just really rich, if you play it you learn stuff.

I've never heard anything by Nilsson that struck me as particularly interesting and from the sound of this thread, you have to sort of "like" Nilsson to dig his stuff - you have to want to hear Nilsson singing, to be into Nilsson, to find his voice beautiful, etc. idk I'm glad people enjoy his music I bear him no animus but everything I've heard just registered as a giant "why would I care about this." Whereas if anybody wanted to know how to both toy with authorial voice at master-class level and weld music to lyrics more perfectly than anybody of his generation, Randy Newman'd be the guy. You don't have to like him, enjoy his voice, be into him personally or his style or whatever. He just has songwriting chops better than p. much anybody's imo.

There's New Orleans jazz moves colliding with all kinds of Golden Era of Standards stuff (Gershwin/Ellington/Cole Porter/et al) plus all the soundtrack chops he gets from his dad - the songwriting is just really rich, if you play it you learn stuff.

right, show tunes basically. which is cool, but there are other people who can write show tunes too, and I don't think Newman really has a knack for catchy pop songs.

well, I don't think "show tunes basically" really covers the ground; Newman's gift is to do in three minutes what most show tunes need a show to manage. nilsson thought newman had a good enough gift for pop songs I guess!

i don't think you have to be into harry to enjoy his songs. his songs have been covered successfully a ton and i doubt many people listening to them and enjoying them know who wrote them.

i'm really tempted to do a hunter/garcia -vs- newman thread. nostalgic rose-tinted americana showdown.

Newman's gift is to do in three minutes what most show tunes need a show to manage.

bore the shit out of me?

penetrating analysis wk

lyrics aren't a thing for you i guess? my point is, with showtunes, you have a book, you have a plotline, the songs exist within it and are often enjoyable without it; in a Randy Newman song you get the whole deal working itself though in the space of a song, they go beyond personified narrator picking up the story to all kinds of interesting places. idk man if you wanna talk about what's interesting to people about Newman's songwriting ok but if you don't then don't ask me to elaborate on things so I won't waste the effort? thanks bro

"in a Randy Newman song you get the whole deal working itself though in the space of a song"

i kind of think this is what a lot of great songwriters do though! a journey in one song that takes you to a lot of interesting places. i think it might even be my ideal for a song. a song that i love anyway. or that i think is memorable or "great".

I love the hell out of the first Nilsson record. The rest is hit or miss for me. Newman ... I don't really listen to him that often, but per aero it really is amazing how efficient a writer he is, squeezing a whole bunch of stuff into just a few minutes. It works as satire, but it also works as something melodic and enjoyable in its own right. It works as pomo, but it's traditional enough to work as more than mere gimmick. And a couple of his albums and several of his songs are masterpieces on staggering levels, afaic.

And wow, check out the song lengths on "Sail Away:"

1. "Sail Away" 2:56
2. "Lonely at the Top" 2:32
3. "He Gives Us All His Love" 1:53
4. "Last Night I Had a Dream" 3:01
5. "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear" 2:00
6. "Old Man" 2:42
Side two
No. Title Length
7. "Political Science" 2:00
8. "Burn On" 2:33
9. "Memo to My Son" 1:56
10. "Dayton, Ohio - 1903" 1:47
11. "You Can Leave Your Hat On" 3:18
12. "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)" 3:36

points off just for making me hear joe cocker bellow through the 80's.

in addition to the stuff aero and others have laid out, newman has a marvelous gift for understatement. this may have something to do with his lack of confidence in his own voice, but he tends to saunter his way into ballads like "i think it's going to rain today," "marie" and "louisiana 1927," with a half-sung, half-spoken approach that can make it hard to hear the fullness and beauty of his melodies right away. he leaves it to his legions of interpreters, including but not at all limited to nilsson, to knock you over the head with those tunes, while he himself lets them sneak up on you at their own pace. which they will. the same is true of his arrangements, even the ones with lots of strings. his smattering of hits are not at all representative in this sense.

love Nilsson Schmilsson, but the 12 Songs-Sail Away-Good Old Boys run beats pretty much anything. all the "Newman is boring" comments make ZERO sense...

lyrics aren't a thing for you i guess?

no, not really. although I think songs like "Daddy's Song", "One", and "I Said Goodbye To Me" have great lyrics. thanks for elaborating beyond "nilsson is minor league" though.

Shit, by "first Nilsson album" I meant, of course, erroneously, Nilsson Schmilsson, which sort of captures my relationship with him in a nutshell. I should really dive back into that well ...

Yeah, what the fuck was I even thinking, I should just buy this new boxed set. Still voting Newman.

randy newman does incredible work with character and narrative, creating something that is often as tender as it is satirical, so, you know, it's all richness. i like what aero said upthread about learning as you play newman compositions bc of all the traditions running up against each other, but i kind of like to think nilsson does the same; he's such an idiosyncratic songwriter that i feel like there must be traditions i can't identify threading together in his music. and of course i think nilsson was an incredible interpreter and arranger; nilsson sings newman is a wonder bc these incredible, moving songs that can work on a very spare scale (and often still do in the context of this record) sort of stretch and deepen in all of these neat, unusual ways

these points were probably made better by other ppl way upthread

agh i love both of these dudes for entirely different reasons so i can't really vote

i guess i have a hard time settling on a favorite nilsson album and good old boys is my favorite album ever when i'm feeling in any way melancholy and compromised; but these are both good things

i guess newman is all about the interior craft of a song and nilsson is all about the angles from which you can attack a song? that feels too rigid a dichotomy to be true exactly

my favorite newman stuff is the stuff he wrote for other folks in the 1960s! that is not a slight on his "solo" records btw.

dusty springfield's version of i think it's gonna rain today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO0zaveGAos

newman skeptics should check out his very first album. it's easier to hear what's great about him there -- elegant, subtle tunes and very low-key, almost buried humor -- than it is in his later and better-known stuff, a lot of which tends to be broader and jokier.

Nilsson etc same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGEBY59iGo

Nilsson etc same

I would say Aerial Ballet is the one to start with

How are Newman's songs technically or formally superior to Nilssons?

Well they're not superior but I'm guessing that Newman is a trained musician, just from his background, I imagine he could read and write music. Nilsson claimed not to be a musician at all(!), but having seen him play guitar and piano that's obviously not true, his piano playing is nice but not exactly Steely Dan

... I mean, I can play quite a few Nilssn songs on piano and I'm no keyboard player!

think randy's 'satirical' reputation really overshadows a lot of the straight(er) tunes in his songbook - something like 'Marie' might be delivered by an unreliable (ie drunk) narrator, but it's still a heartfelt love song, a beautiful one.

always found nilsson a bit baroque for my tastes

i kinda dig this. maybe i just need to hear other people doing his stuff. the grateful dead could have done a good cover of nina's version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH9ZzrkLTDQ

i heard that because i heard this for the first time this week and was staggered a bit by it. really incredible to me. if i ever feel that way about a randy newman song i'll let you know. this actually played at the end of a movie i was watching and i couldn't believe how beautiful it sounded to me. her vocal performance is out of this world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yU9WHTWzE0

There a lot of great Randy Newman covers (of other songs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHEPi_iK6jM

Nilsson is such a strange outlier, but Newman's place in the history of the industry is pretty fascinating. His three uncles were all film composers, as were a couple of cousins. His childhood friend was Lenny Waronker, whose dad Simon founded Liberty records (whose principals Simon, Theodore and Al were the origin of the three Chipmunks; Ross Bagdasarian/David Seville was one of their biggest acts). Randy took piano lessons with Lenny, who went on to run Warner Bros. records for years and helped shelter weirdos like Randy and Van Dyke Parks; Randy's first releases I think were snuck on b-sides of Liberty singles, thanks to his relationship with Simon/Lenny. Randy lived this fruitful parallel existence to Jan and Dean (who were signed to Liberty) and the Beach Boys, and Phil Spector, too. I'm nit sure any/many of them crossed paths, but there was obviously some degree of cross pollenation.

is there a good newman biography? i'd probably just read the first few chapters.

i wish more newman stuff sounded like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug1XU-XvjBI

randy newman didn't write gone dead train! nazareth and crazy horse versions are way better.

great song.

i know but since we are talking about nilsson as cover artist i thought that was a pretty good cover by newman
i love nilsson in any of his roles

vocals on many rivers to cross just destroys me (and nilsson's vocal chords too apparently)

my all-time favorite randy newman song is the wolfgang press cover of mama told me not to come. one of my fave 12 inches. although my favorite thing on the 12 inch is the instrumental/version of it. so great.

i hope you guys are ready to rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFeMSz2Ijkw

Nilsson for me, but I like Randy too. I'm only really familiar with his first few albums, what are the great later ones?

I wish there were more Randy Newman songs that sounded like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8xq7hhBipE