This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Much of ’70s singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson’s fame seemed to come secondhand. As a singer, the golden-voiced New Yorker is perhaps best known for the Midnight Cowboy theme Everybody’s Talkin’ — which he didn’t write — and the novelty number Coconut. As a composer, his most enduring song might be One — though Three Dog Night had a bigger hit with the tune. And as a pop culture icon, he’s known mainly as John Lennon’s sidekick during the Beatle’s 1974 ‘lost weekend’ in L.A. Still, Nilsson’s influence on contemporary music — particularly the quirky, literate pop of artists like Ben Folds, XTC, Rufus Wainwright and Hawksley Workman — is undeniable. To give credit where it’s due, BMG has reissued virtually the entire Nilsson catalog, some 15 albums spread across 10 CDs. I sifted through them all so you don’t have to.
Harry Nilsson
That’s The Way It Is / Knnillssonn
FIRST RELEASED: ’76 / ’77.
HIGHLIGHTS: All parties have to end, and for Nilsson it was time. After several commercial duds, he capitulated to his label for the aptly titled That’s the Way It Is, a commercial set of covers like George Harrison’s That Is All, Randy Newman’s Sail Away, I Need You and Zombie Jamboree. When it stiffed too, he was able to return to his own material for the string-based Knnillssonn, which is highlighted by the musical murder-mystery Who Done It? and the Wilco-like Lean On Me.
EXTRAS! EXTRAS! By this point, it seems, Harry had already done more than his share. He put out one more album that never got released in the U.S. then retired after the assassination of his friend Lennon. He died of a heart attack in 1994.
