{"id":405671,"date":"2026-02-03T13:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T13:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/405671\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T13:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T13:32:08","slug":"the-quickest-three-dog-night-song-paul-williams-ever-wrote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/405671\/","title":{"rendered":"The quickest Three Dog Night song Paul Williams ever wrote"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ A&M Records)<\/p>\n

Tue 3 February 2026 10:19, UK <\/p>\n

The mark of an exceptional singer-songwriter<\/a> isn\u2019t necessarily the ease with which they\u2019re able to come up with masterpieces, but is quite often exemplified by the fact that they\u2019re able to maintain a sense of consistency over a long period of time.<\/p>\n

Paul Williams, while not necessarily a household name, has had an illustrious career, writing hit songs for a variety of different artists spanning from The Carpenters<\/a>\u2019 \u2018We\u2019ve Only Just Begun\u2019 and \u2018Rainy Days and Mondays\u2019, to Daft Punk\u2019s \u2018Touch\u2019. Not only this, but his work composing for films, such as The Muppet Movie, Bugsy Malone and Smokey and the Bandit, the latter of which he also starred in, have all earned him significant praise in this field.<\/p>\n

Despite his career having begun in the 1960s, Williams remains a songwriter for hire to this day, and that amount of longevity should be celebrated in itself. Many songwriters of this age will begin to wind down their output once they\u2019ve reached their 80s, but Williams remains just as imaginative and open to contributing to the future of music now as he did during his prime.<\/p>\n

However, while writing timeless songs isn\u2019t something that always comes along without immense amounts of effort, when it does come easily, it\u2019s often accompanied by the most thrilling feeling that your work has reached an unmatchable level of excellence.<\/p>\n

During the 1960s and \u201870s, Williams wrote a handful of songs for US soft rockers Three Dog Night<\/a>, with both \u2018Out in the Country\u2019 and \u2018Family of Man\u2019 both earning him hits for the band. However, there\u2019s one track he gave to the group that sticks out to him for the ease with which he wrote it, and it remains one of the most beloved songs in the band\u2019s catalogue.<\/p>\n

\u2018An Old Fashioned Love Song\u2019 is one of the band\u2019s best-known tracks, and came to Williams in a sudden wave of inspiration when he wrote it in 1971. While the song isn\u2019t necessarily the most complex, its simplicity is arguably what has made it so enduring, and exists as proof that sometimes, the greatest works don\u2019t have to come to fruition as a result of hard labour.<\/p>\n

In an interview with SongFacts, Williams claimed that the inspiration for the song came at a time when he wasn\u2019t even meant to be in the songwriting mindset. \u201cI had a date one night with a young lady named Patti Dahlstrom,\u201d he explained. \u201cShe was a songwriter. We were going to go out and have dinner. And right before I left for the date I had gotten a phone call that I had a gold record. And I walked into her house, and I said, \u2018Well, got a gold record for such-and-such, it just went gold. Kid did it again with another old fashioned love song.\u2019 It just came out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, stating that the phrase \u2018an old fashioned love song\u2019 prompted a wave of inspiration in him. \u201cI went, \u2018Wait a minute.\u2019\u201d he added. \u201cI went over to her piano and I sat down, and it\u2019s the quickest I ever had a song come out of me. And it sounds like it. It\u2019s a really simple song, I wrote it in like 20 minutes. And it was a big hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the inspiration for the song might seem obvious, with him having come up with the idea simply by playing with the concept of a well-established theme in pop music, it\u2019s still genuinely impressive that you can come up with a massive hit in such a short space of time, no matter how straightforward it might be.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ A&M Records) Tue 3 February 2026 10:19, UK The mark of an exceptional singer-songwriter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,62095,151216,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-405671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-paul-williams","11":"tag-three-dog-night","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}