Paul Williams

Paul Hamilton Williams Jr. (born September 19, 1940) is an American composer, singer, songwriter, and actor.

Together, they wrote the song "Fill Your Heart" which was recorded by Rose on his first album, The Thorn in Mrs. Rose's Side (1968).

Tiny Tim covered it as the B-side of his hit "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" (1968).

One of his brothers was John J. Williams, a NASA rocket scientist, who participated in the Mercury and Apollo programs and was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, their highest honor, in 1969.

An early collaboration with Roger Nichols, "Someday Man", was covered by the Monkees (a group for which he unsuccessfully auditioned ) on a 1969 single, and was the first Monkees' release not published by Screen Gems.

A frequent co-writer of Williams' was musician Kenneth Ascher.

He is known for writing and co-writing popular songs performed by a number of acts in the 1970s, including Three Dog Night's "An Old Fashioned Love Song" and "Out in the Country", Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World", Biff Rose's "Fill Your Heart", and the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays".

He also wrote "Cried Like a Baby" for teen idol Bobby Sherman.

Williams and Nichols were responsible for a number of successful pop hits from the 1970s, including several hits for Three Dog Night ("An Old Fashioned Love Song", "The Family of Man" and "Out in the Country"), Helen Reddy ("You and Me Against the World"), and the Carpenters, most notably "Rainy Days and Mondays", "I Won't Last a Day Without You", and "We've Only Just Begun", originally a song for a Crocker National Bank television commercial featuring newlyweds, and which has since become a cover-band standard and de rigueur for weddings throughout North America.

David Bowie recorded a version of the song on his album Hunky Dory (1971).

Rose and Williams wrote "I'll Walk Away" (recorded by Rose on his third, eponymous album).

Rose was instrumental in getting Williams his break with A&M Records which resulted in Williams working with songwriter Roger Nichols.

His other brother was Mentor Williams, a songwriter as well who wrote Dobie Gray's 1973 hit "Drift Away".

Williams began his professional songwriting career with Biff Rose in Los Angeles.

The two men first met while working together on a television comedy show.

Williams worked on the music for a number of films, including writing and singing on Phantom of the Paradise (1974) in which he starred and earned an Oscar nomination for the music, and Bugsy Malone (1976).

Williams wrote and sang the song "Where Do I Go from Here", which was used in the end credits of the film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

He contributed lyrics to the Cinderella Liberty song "You're So Nice to Be Around" with music by John Williams, and it earned them an Oscar nomination.

Williams is also known for writing the score and lyrics for Bugsy Malone (1976) and his musical contributions to other films, including the Oscar-nominated song "Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie, and writing the lyrics to the #1 chart-topping song "Evergreen", the love theme from the Barbra Streisand film A Star Is Born, for which he won a Grammy for Song of the Year and an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

He wrote the lyrics to the opening theme for the television show The Love Boat, with music previously composed by Charles Fox, which was originally sung by Jack Jones and, later, by Dionne Warwick.

Along with Ascher and Rupert Holmes, he wrote the music and lyrics to A Star Is Born (also 1976), with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

The love ballad, "Evergreen", (lyrics by Paul Williams, melody by Barbra Streisand) won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy for Song of the Year.

He has been nominated on other occasions for an Academy Award and several Golden Globe Awards.

He wrote and sang "What Would They Say", the theme song from the made-for-television film The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976).

Williams had a variety of high-profile acting roles, such as Little Enos Burdette in the action-comedy Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and the villainous Swan in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974), which Williams also co-scored, receiving an Oscar nomination in the process.

Their songs together included "Rainbow Connection", sung by Jim Henson (as Kermit the Frog) in The Muppet Movie (1979).

In 1987 he wrote the songs performed by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty in the film Ishtar.

He wrote the music for a musical production of Happy Days that debuted in 2007 and made a cameo appearance as an animated version of himself singing "Breathe in the Sunshine" in a 1998 episode of the animated series Dexter's Laboratory.

Since 2009, Williams has been the president and chairman of the American songwriting society ASCAP.

Williams was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Paul Hamilton Williams, an architectural engineer, and his wife, Bertha Mae (née Burnside), a homemaker.

In April 2009, Williams was elected president and Chairman of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

Williams wrote music and lyrics of "Silence is Our Song" for Richard Barone's 2010 album Glow and collaborated with Scissor Sisters on their second album, Ta-Dah.

In March 2012, it was announced that Williams had "written a couple of tunes" on Random Access Memories, the album of French electronic duo Daft Punk.

He co-wrote and sang vocals on "Touch" and co-wrote "Beyond".

Williams and Nile Rodgers were the only featured artists to speak on behalf of Daft Punk at the 2014 Grammy Awards upon their receipt of the Album of the Year award for Random Access Memories.

Williams told an anecdote about his work with Daft Punk: "Back when I was drinking, I would imagine things that weren't there and I'd get frightened. Then I got sober and two robots called and asked me to make an album."

He communicated a "message from the robots" to the audience: "As elegant and as classy as the Grammy has ever been is the moment when we saw those wonderful marriages and 'Same Love' is fantastic. It is the height of fairness and love and the power of love for all people at any time in any combination is what [Daft Punk] wanted me to say. Captain Kirk uses the Enterprise. [Daft Punk] sail on a ship called Generosity. They are generous in spirit ... This is a labor of love and we are all so grateful."

Williams is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and his songs have been performed by both pop and country music artists.

In September 2015, Williams, along with bass player Kasim Sulton, led a global virtual songwriting collaboration at Hookist.com.

The mission was to write the first crowd-sourced anthem to be performed at FacingAddiction.org's concert and rally on The National Mall on October 4, 2015, headlined by Steven Tyler, Sheryl Crow and Joe Walsh among others.