NILSSON - “Without You”
(#311, 11th March 1972)
A friend of mine recently slammed “Without You” as obnoxious emotional blackmail. Fair enough, but there’s enough of the old Wedding Present fan in me to enjoy the occasional wallow in passive-aggressive neediness, and wallows don’t come much more luxurious than this. “Without Me” is an inheritor of the Engelbert style - the same combination of heart-tugging topic, smooth vocals, and sumptuous instrumental chassis. But the formula’s had some highly effective upgrades too. “Without Me” may be highly arranged but it doesn’t sound remotely old-timey: Richard Perry’s mix avoids orchestral bludgeon to let pretty details catch your ear. Nilsson, too, gets intimate when he needs to - starting pensive, and later letting his voice crack on the big second chorus.
The result is maybe the first ballad on the lists that sounds “modern” - if an X Factor contestant decided to hit with “Without You”, they could use this arrangement and production and it wouldn’t sound like a retro or genre exercise. It also probably wouldn’t sound this good - Nilsson’s singing on the verses is deliciously creamy, and even if he doesn’t quite convince me on the not-living thing, his performance still has an emotional kick, dramatising the horribly slender, slippable gap between acceptance and despair. 6
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lex on March 16th, 2007
I much prefer Mariah’s version precisely because of the greater bludgeon!
FT's Tom on March 16th, 2007
I mean “bludgeon” in terms of the more undifferentiated arrangements you would get on older-school ballads (eg Al Martino). Can’t really remember how the Mariah version goes (well, obviously I know how it *goes*, I mean what she does with it). I will find out when I get to it if I like it more!
The original by Badfinger is more matter-of-fact and ‘believable’ I guess but something’s definitely lacking in it.
Rosie on March 16th, 2007
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!
FT's Tom on March 16th, 2007
Another good thing about it - it’s much shorter than you think it is: not many records manage to be so epic with such economy.
Kat on March 16th, 2007
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.
Marcello Carlin on March 16th, 2007
The Badfinger original is a bit messy and overlong, as if they haven’t quite worked out what to do with the song, whereas Nilsson sets to the task, perhaps with a pinch of cold efficiency…but the impact is overwhelming, with a near-perfect balance between restraint and explosion, all the more unexpected because Nilsson was until then the kind of singer who rarely, if ever, raised his voice; his music (even the happy songs) was all about broken shadows.
Jimmy Webb was recording an album of his own in the adjacent studio at the time and witnessed what he still considers to be the greatest vocal performance in all of pop or rock. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far but I’d be inclined to give this a 9 - especially with that police siren piano motif which always seems to signify death in pop (from “I Am The Walrus” to “Waiting For The Miracle”).
The Mariah version is overblown bilge which doesn’t even qualify as camp - that key change at the end is totally unnecessary, as are her miaowing melismatics - but we can talk about that more when we reach the far-flung waters of 1994.
Erithian on March 16th, 2007
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”.
jeff w on March 16th, 2007
This is where I came in.
Not in the sense that this was #1 on my birthday. In the sense that this is the record that marked the start of my 35-years-and-counting ongoing intense relationship with pop. (It would be another 9 months before that LP with Chicory Tip, T.Rex et al on it would come into my possession.)
In short, this is the first pop record that I had a strong emotional response to.
I’m six, very nearly seven, years of age. Unusually, I’m alone in the house. Parents were briefly absent - perhaps my Dad was on one of his business trips, and Mum had briefly popped out to collect my sister from brownies. I’m watching Top Of The Pops and this song closes the show. Nilsson’s not in the studio; the Beeb are showing a promo film made to accompany the song. As I remember it, there’s some bloke - that may or may not be Harry - mooching by a lake, alone. It’s all shot in soft focus like a Cadbury’s flake ad. By the song’s end I’m trembling and crying, and don’t want to be on my own anymore.
Hitherto, pop had been an amusing diversion at best. After “Without You”, however, and perhaps subconsciously at first, I sought it out. Whatever buttons this song and the performance were intended to press, they certainly pressed them in my case. And I think this was 99% down to the music - even then, I never paid much attention to lyrics (although the basic concept of Nilsson not wanting to be without somebody must have permeated to some extent that evening).
I’ve never owned a copy of this record. I’ve come across it regularly since ‘72 of course, on the radio or on TV. I absorbed it more thoroughly aged 15 or 16 when I found it on a cassette compilation of lurve songs my sister bought. By then, I could analyse it more clinically - could appreciate the vocal performance and the arrangement, and could see why it works where other ballads leave me cold. But that initial impact is always going to shape my future relationship to the record.
Obviously a 10.
Marcello Carlin on March 16th, 2007
Noel played some strange stuff in his early radio days; IIRC he was especially keen on Staveley Makepeace, and more about them anon…
Erithian on March 16th, 2007
Spoiler!! ; )
Lena on March 16th, 2007
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…
Doctor Casino on March 16th, 2007
9 at least. But I feel that way about Nilsson from this period generally. I haven’t heard Mariah’s version and I really can’t imagine anybody else doing this song somehow - Harry really does nail the perfect amount of sincerity, bombast, and pathetic drunk that this lyric/production needs to work.
My name is Kenny on March 16th, 2007
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.”
Daniel_Rf on March 16th, 2007
Great record.
blount on March 16th, 2007
10 for me as well, perfect execution.
intothefireuk on March 16th, 2007
One of my favourite ballads. Nilssons voice is perfect for this song. He doesn’t try to embellish the song with superfluous unneccesary vocal histrionics (hello Mariah). I read this as a sincere & honest recording with just the right amount of balls. A 9 or 10. Usually I always prefer the original version of any song as its normally always the sincerest version but Harry nailed this. An exception to the rule.
Ms Scareys hideous cover sums up everything I dislike about the woman.
Rosie on March 17th, 2007
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.
major clout on March 17th, 2007
10 for me as well, perfect execution. almost as good as 10 tacos
FT's wwolfe on March 19th, 2007
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.
Rosie on March 20th, 2007
Wasn’t Badfinger the result of McCartney attempting to clone himself?
Marcello Carlin on March 20th, 2007
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.
o sobek! on March 23rd, 2007
Marcello would The Beatles : Badfinger :: The Kinks : Big Star (and maybe The Stones : NY Dolls) be fair enough? I think the only Badfinger I know are “Come and Get It” and “Day After Day”, both of which are incredibly Beatles, albeit in pretty different ways.
Waldo on March 28th, 2007
I can’t live with any of this…
jimmymod on March 29th, 2007
At the very least an 8, possibly a 9 or 10 depending on how you felt abt. The Rules Of Attraction
Mike Jones on April 2nd, 2007
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.
Barry on April 4th, 2007
If I remember correctly, Heart did a pretty respectable job with “Without You” back in the late seventies - early eighties. I haven’t heard it for a while, but I remember thinking Ann (or was it Nancy) did it justice. The Mariah version makes me want to cringe. BB
jules on June 23rd, 2007
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.
Jake on December 2nd, 2007
You can hear and download Badfinger’s version and a few versions by Nilsson (including a piano demo) at For The Love Of Harry
http://fortheloveofharry.blogspot.com/2007/11/without-you-19701971.html
Danny on April 17th, 2008
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.
Danny on April 17th, 2008
PS: Nilsson died of heart failure on January 15, 1994 - the same day Carey’s version was released in the US. Her version MAY have killed him.