Harry Nilsson – Everybodys Talkin’

“Everybody’s Talkin'” – Single by Nilsson from the album Aerial Ballet
B-side “Don’t Leave Me”
Released July 1968
Recorded November 13, 1967
Label RCA Victor
Songwriter Fred Neil
Producer Rick Jarrard
Charted No.6 in US; No.23 in UK; No.1 in Canada; No.15 in Italy

Harry Nilsson was searching for a successful song when Rick Jarrard played the track for him, and he decided to record it on November 13, 1967. It was eventually released on his 1968 album Aerial Ballet.[11] When originally released as a single in July 1968, it managed to reach only No. 13 on the Billboard Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart.

As director John Schlesinger was working on the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, Derek Taylor recommended Nilsson for the soundtrack to Schlesinger. While Nilsson wrote a new song intended for the film’s soundtrack (“I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City”), Schlesinger instead preferred “Everybody’s Talkin'”, and used it as the film’s theme song. Nilsson re-recorded the song with a slightly different arrangement from the Aerial Ballet version, to better adapt to the music lengths required for various sequences in the film.

Following the success of Midnight Cowboy in theaters, RCA re-released the Aerial Ballet version as a single, with this re-release becoming a hit, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 2 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart. The song and movie have since become closely associated with one another;[16] Nilsson’s cover is also known as “Everybody’s Talkin’ (Theme from Midnight Cowboy)”. William J. Mann, in his biography of Schlesinger, noted that “one cannot imagine Midnight Cowboy now without ‘Everybody’s Talkin'”

This song won Nilsson the Grammy award for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male.

Nilsson issued “Everybody’s Talkin'” as a single in 1968, but it was pulled and released a year later when the movie came out.

The album title, Aerial Ballet, was inspired by the aerial ballet act performed by Nilsson’s Swedish grandparents, who were circus performers and dancers.