Album of the Week: Pussy Cats

It's almost summer, and you know what that means for Record Club! (Maybe you don't because this is only the second year we're doing this, but still!) The polls are open! As in 2025, for the summer of 2026, we're having everyone vote on the albums that we'll be listening to, according to certain categories. And then I'll send emails trying to get people to commit to certain reviews throughout the summer, as well as forcing people to come back and rejoin RC for a week or two. "Forcing" being sarcastic, because there's nothing I can actually do to force anyone to blog. But I think it's fun to try!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR YOUR RC ALBUMS OF SUMMER 2026

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WEEK 376 — April 12-18, 2026

Pussy Cats

by Harry Nilsson

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY JOE

JOE'S PITCH: For as much as I espouse the importance of the "Record Club rules," I am also fond of trying to find ways to test those rules. I was first made aware of the existence of this album when PoYB nemesis Steve Hyden ranked his top albums of 2006 (a retrospective list, published here in 2026), and #19 was "Pussy Cats" Starring the Walkmen by the Walkmen. It's a full-album cover of Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats. Everything in this blurb by Hyden was news to me. But my thought was, what if Record Club did the Nilsson album one week, and the Walkmen cover album one week later? I asked around the PoYB staff room, and no one seemed to take issue with it, so I locked it in. And here we are. Hopefully it sounds like a fun bit to you too, and you can check out both albums over the next couple weeks, and see what comes of it.

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Pop rock, singer-songwriter, baroque pop, rock & roll, art pop

RELEASED: August 19, 1974

LENGTH: 36:30

TRACKLIST:

1. Many Rivers to Cross
2. Subterranean Homesick Blues
3. Don't Forget Me
4. All My Life
5. Old Forgotten Soldier
6. Save the Last Dance for Me
7. Mucho Mungo / Mt. Elga
8. Loop de Loop (ft. Massed Alberts Kids Chorale)
9. Black Sails
10. Rock Around the Clock

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his

ABOUT: Harry Edward Nilsson III was born June 15, 1941, in Brooklyn, NY. His music is now credited as Harry Nilsson, though that's a correction from some of it occasionally being credited as just "Nilsson." He's an artist who, even if you don't recognize by name, you definitely recognize by at least one song. He hit number one on the charts with "Without You," had a novelty hit in "Coconut," and maybe if you were a fan of zeitgeisty TV shows in the late '10s, you'll recognize "Gotta Get Up" for its repeated use in Russian Doll. All those songs came during his commercial peak in the '70s, which he achieved without really touring all that much. Elsewhere in his career, he experimented with vocal overdub, the Great American Songbook, and Caribbean sounds. He was good friends with John Lennon (in 1968, the Beatles stated that Nilsson was their favorite American artist). Nilsson semi-retired from music in the '80s, after Lennon's murder, to advocate for gun control. He passed away on January 15, 1994, after a heart attack, at the age of 52. 

DISCOGRAPHY: Wikipedia has Pussy Cats as the twelfth of nineteen studio albums. The first was on 1966's Spotlight on Nilsson. The most recent listed here is 2019's Losst and Founnd, which is posthumous collection of recordings. The last studio album released in his lifetime was 1980's Flash Harry (this is also not including 1980's Popeye soundtrack, which technically came out second). The songs mentioned in the previous blurb are all from 1971's Nilsson Schmilsson.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: the Stereogum Number Ones article about Nilsson's "Without You"

WATCHING SOME SHIT: mini-documentary (six minutes long) on the making of this album

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: The guitarist on Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is the producer on this album. The bassist (Klaus Voorman) and the drummer on that album also do some work with those instruments on Pussy Cats. Record Club will be covering solo albums by the guitarist/producer and the drummer in approximately 120 weeks.

Sean G. gave numerous shoutouts to Nilsson when he picked Titanic Rising for RC last year.

For some reason, I always get it mixed up, and misremember that Janis Joplin died on Harry Nilsson's couch. It was actually Cass Elliot who died there, as well as Keith Moon (who does some drumming on this album). I'm marking this space for when we eventually cover the Mamas and the Papas and the Who in this music club.

Harry Nilsson is our third Harry, after Harry Styles and Harry Potter. Pussy Cats is our fourth cat, after Cat Power, Cat Heaven, and Cheshire Cat.

Julien Baker (of boygenius) covered a Nilsson song. Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) covered a Nilsson song too. And did you know that Weezer claimed that Harry Nilsson influenced them in the making of OK Human?

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is covered on this album, and was written by RC alumnus Bob Dylan. That one's not a stretch, but this one is: Nilsson's production company was called Hawkeye, which is also the name of the character that Jeremy Renner famously plays in some fucking movie series.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Nilsson appears on MMM 044. Nilsson Schmilsson was one of my favorite non-2020 albums of 2020. "Without You" has a key change, and was included in Dranders' birthday key change power hour mixtape. Death couch references abound, including a start-of-year check-in with the Who and Keith Moon.

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COUNTDOWN:

69 Weeks Until Week 420

We are tracking and counting down every week from here on out till Record Club Week 420. We started this countdown 69 weeks out. During Record Club Week 420, we will be covering Donny Most by the esteemed Happy Days virgin Donny Most. The goal for Week 420 of Record Club is that it will feature 69 reviews from 69 different people. 

THIS WEEK: We are 44 weeks away from Week 420.

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!