Harry Nilsson / The Point! / 1970
Everything's Got 'Em
lulling, hymn-like, quietly ominous
A short, incantatory nursery-rhyme of a song from Nilsson's children's fable The Point!, establishing the conformist village where every resident (and every object) is required to have a point on their head. Through pure repetition rather than argument, it makes conformity sound both soothing and slightly sinister.
conformity belonging vs. exclusion social conditioning childhood fable logic tradition as inertia
Who's speaking
An unnamed communal or narrator's voice describing the town from outside, almost like a tour guide or town crier addressing a listener new to the place
What happens
The song doesn't develop a plot so much as establish a setting: a town where everyone conforms to the same rule, stated and restated until it feels like law. It briefly widens from people to 'everything,' universalizing the requirement, before returning to the same closing assertion that this is simply how things are and will remain.
How it's built
Built almost entirely on refrain and repetition rather than verse-chorus contrast. The same four lines recur nearly verbatim three times, bracketing a brief middle section that shifts to a chant-like list about 'everything' having 'one.' The song ends by dropping the descriptive lines entirely and leaving only the closing couplet, as if the town's identity has been reduced to its rule.
Section by section
Opening refrain
“this is the town where the people all stay”
The introductory lines read almost like a fairy-tale establishing shot, but the phrasing emphasizes permanence and containment as much as description, hinting that staying is less a choice than an expectation.
Middle chant
“everything's got 'em, everything needs one”
This section pulls back from the town itself to state the rule in the abstract, turning the specific social expectation into something like a natural law that applies to every object and person alike.
Closing repetition
Stripped of the town's physical description, the final lines isolate the assertion of tradition on its own, letting the song end on pure insistence rather than narrative, which underscores how self-justifying and closed the town's logic is.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated opening formula about the town and its people functions like a ritual introduction, reinforcing the idea of fixed, unquestioned custom.
- synecdoche/generalization
- The shift from 'the people' to 'everything' expands the town's rule from a social norm to a near-cosmic law, suggesting the point isn't just social pressure but something built into the fabric of this world.
- circular structure
- The song ends where it began, textually and thematically, mirroring the idea that the town's customs are self-perpetuating and resistant to change.
Reading it
On its surface this is scene-setting for a children's story about a boy born without a point in a town where everyone has one. But the insistence on repetition, and the way the lyric slides from describing people to describing 'everything,' reads as a gentle satire of arbitrary social norms: rules that persist not because they make sense but because they've always been that way. An alternative, softer reading is that it's simply functional exposition for young listeners, using repetition as a mnemonic device typical of children's media rather than as pointed commentary.
Context
This song opens Nilsson's 1971 (originally 1970 TV special) concept album/fable The Point!, which tells the story of Oblio, the only round-headed boy in a town where everyone has a pointed head. The repetitive, singsong quality fits the album's function as a narrated children's story, with songs serving as connective tissue between spoken narration.
Listen for
- The near word-for-word repetition of the town description and how small variations shift its meaning
- The tonal lift when the song generalizes from 'people' to 'everything'
- The way the melody's simplicity mirrors the rigidity of the town's rule
- The absence of any dissenting voice in the lyric, reinforcing the sense of unquestioned consensus
About Harry Nilsson
Harold "Harry" Edward Nilsson III, sometimes credited as Nilsson, was an American singer and songwriter known for his versatile tenor range, pioneering use of vocal overdubbing, explorations of the Great American Songbook, and Caribbean fusion sounds. He was one of the few major pop-rock artists to achieve significant commercial success without touring or performing large-scale public concerts.
1941 - 1994 / United States
Full biography and catalogue