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Thanks, Dr.Deth—I had not known that Badfinger wrote "Without You." Listened carefully and still like Nilsson's version better, due to his ability to make the phrasing more lyrical—Badfinger's timing is rote, like reciting a limerick compared to reciting Shakespeare's iambic pentameter. Nilsson was also able to inject more authentic pain; maybe he chose the song because of a personal breakup.

It's always amazing when a cover exceeds the original composer's version by a large margin like that, such as Whitney Houston's take on Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" with its amazing chord shift; or Frank Sinatra's version of Paul Anka's "My Way." Parton wrote her song out of bittersweetness at leaving her longtime mentor Porter Waggoner, so Whitney had nothing to do with its creation; but Anka possibly admired Frank Sinatra so deeply that he "channeled" Sinatra's style as the perfect expression of "My Way," both the music and the lyrics. Anka had a good voice, but Sinatra truly had no equal during his entire career.

As a side note, I went to the send-off for President Trump at Joint Base Andrews. To keep it from getting maudlin, he had loudspeakers playing a lot of his rally favorites, such as "Macho Man" and "YMCA." But after the speeches and he and Melania boarding Air Force One, the plane taxied way down the runway and back again in front of the crowd to take off, to the deafening sound of Sinatra's "My Way." Trust me, I never really "heard" the last verse until those moments:

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows
I took the blows
And did it my way