Harry Nilsson

Rakish baroque-pop iconoclast Harry Nilsson was an accomplished songwriter, interpreter of song, and prodigious vocal talent whose influence and reputation have grown greatly with time. He was born in Brooklyn in 1941—a year that became the title of an autobiographical song on 1967’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, his first proper studio LP. Coming after he’d gained attention as a singer-songwriter-for-hire in Los Angeles, the album was quickly followed by the ornate, Beatles-esque Aerial Ballet (1968), featuring the enduring “One.” Nilsson adopted a more rock-oriented sound with 1971’s Nilsson Schmilsson, with detours into children’s music (1970’s The Point), novelty songs, calypso, and standards (1973’s A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night). He notoriously blew out his voice while recording the 1974 whiskey-soaked John Lennon collaborative album Pussy Cats, and he never recovered his range. Nonetheless, he produced classic material up through the early ’80s—see the soundtrack for Robert Altman’s Popeye—and performed and recorded sporadically until his passing in 1994.