I’d never heard of Laura Nyro until about a year ago. She’s another of those influential and mega-talented artists who faded into obscurity because they never achieved much commercial popularity. Some of her songs were big hits, but always for other people.

It seems Nyro was something of a savant when it came to songwriting. She was just 20 years old when she released Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, the groundbreaking album that features this song. She leaped between keys and time signatures within her songs in a way not done very often before or since.

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