Sunday Music – I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City

Posted on Sun 01/20/2013 by TonyfromOz

Today’s music video is I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City, sung here in this clip by Harry Nilsson.

This video was posted to You Tube by SuperStratega

It’s hard to believe that this song is now 43 years old. It seems that good songs just live on forever, and every time you hear them, they take you back to that time.

Originally, this song was written with the movie Midnight Cowboy in mind, and it was being considered for the title song for that movie. What is odd is that while Harry Nilsson wrote this song for that movie, it wasn’t selected, and another of his songs, his cover of the 1966 Fred Neil song Everybody’s Talkin’ was picked as the title track for the movie instead, and that song became a monster hit for Harry, riding on the back of that popular movie, and earning Harry the first of his two Grammy Awards. The song was released by Harry a year earlier, and was a minor hit for him, and was then re-released with the movie’s release.

This featured song for today was released not long after that first song, and while Harry was still ‘hot’, and it also became a hit, although not as huge a hit as Everybody’s Talkin’.

Harry Nilsson is unique in popular music, achieving mass popularity and sales without performing major concerts or major tours. This has sometimes been put down to the fact that he suffered from severe stage fright, but that is based mainly on rumour. He really never did like performing live, and Harry himself said that he got nothing out of it, and he just preferred to do his work either writing or recording.

He was prolific when it came to making new albums and he released 14 Studio albums in the 11 years since his first album. Most of those albums sold reasonably, some more than others and his biggest album was Nilsson Schmilsson which was a Top Five album in most Countries around the World.

He wrote a number of songs for other artists as well, and quite a few of the songs he released have been covered by other artists as well.

Hi single biggest hit was Without You, Harry’s cover of the Badfinger song, and probably one of the biggest songs to come out of the 70’s, a huge Number One for Harry all around the World, and that song won Harry his second Grammy Award.

I featured that song Without You at the following link.

Sunday Music – Without You

There are virtually no live versions of any Harry Nilsson songs, so any clips of his songs are the studio version of the song with images overlaid over the music itself.

Sadly, Harry Nilsson is no longer with us, passing in January of 1994.