Ones

A common musical theme, the best known version of a song by this title is One by Three Dog Night (U2's song by the same name is a close second), a big hit in 1969.  The song was written by Harry Nilsson, a mostly-forgotten figure now, but a well known songwriter and singer in the late 60s and early 70s and one of the first popularizers of Randy Newman songs.  His two biggest hits were covers, Everybody's Talkin' At Me (from the film Midnight Cowboy) and the bombastic Without You, true 70s dreck.  This is a great Nilsson original, Without Her (you really should listen to the linked clip).  He was also a drinking buddy of John Lennon and Ringo Starr and worked on recordings with all four of the former Beatles.


My favorite cover of the song is by Aimee Mann.  This is her 1995 version (later featured in the movie Magnolia).  You may remember Aimee as the bass player and lead singer for Til Tuesday which had a hit with Voices Carry in the 1980s.

Here's her version of One (the woman in the video is not Mann).

And this is her 2009 version of Voices Carry.

Aimee also played one of the German nihilists in The Big Lebowski.  Another of the nihilists was portrayed by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers while Peter Stormare played the lead nihilist (can you have a lead nihilist?).  During his prior Coen Brothers appearance in Fargo, Stormare inserted Steve Buscemi into a wood chipper.  And, to close the circle, Buscemi plays the gentle and constantly perplexed Theodore Donald "Donny" Kerabatsos in The Big Lebowski but he is not inserted into a wood chipper in that film though, as in the previous movie, his remains end up scattered on the ground.