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My first attempt at covering this song. The whole Nilsson Schmilsson album is a great
one and was played a lot in our house when I was a kid.
"Without You" is a song written by musicians Pete Ham and Tom Evans of British rock group Badfinger. The ballad has been recorded by more than 180 artists and has made many appearances on the Billboard Hot 100, including the number one position. Beatle Paul McCartney once described the ballad as "...the killer song of all time."
Harry Nilsson, at the time best known for his hit "Everybody's Talkin'" and for composing such hits as Three Dog Night's "One", heard Badfinger's recording of "Without You" at a party, and mistook it for a Beatles song. After realizing it was not, he decided to cover the song for his album Nilsson Schmilsson in 1971; it stayed at number 1 on the U.S. pop chart for four weeks, from February 13 to March 11, 1972. The song also spent five weeks atop the U.S. adult contemporary chart. In the UK, the song spent five weeks at number 1 on the British pop chart, beginning on March 11, and sold almost 800,000 copies. The single was produced by Richard Perry, who later explained, "It was a different record for its time. It was a big ballad with a heavy backbeat, and although many artists have cut songs like it since, no one was doing it then." Gary Wright, then known as a member of the British group Spooky Tooth, and later a successful solo artist in his own right, played piano on the recording
