“Gotta Get Up” by Harry Nilsson

Harry Nilsson kicks off Nilsson Schmilsson with "Gotta Get Up", a bouncy, music-hall romp about the morning the fun stops and grown-up responsibility clocks in, and it first surfaced in 1971 on the flip side of "Without You". He built the lyric out of his parents' lives and his own days working at a bank. The song was older than the album, too: he'd tried it in March 1968 for Aerial Ballet or Harry, in a sunnier, faster version.

Richard Perry's remake is weightier. Nilsson plays piano, Klaus Voormann bass, Jim Gordon drums, Chris Spedding guitar, Jim Price trumpet and trombone, Henry Krein accordion, and Perry himself percussion. It took so many takes that everybody got stir-crazy and started clowning around, Perry said, and Nilsson folded the madness into the song, which winds up in a chance-driven glissando.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.