who said country music is three chords and the truth
Harlan Howard Howard formulated the oft-quoted definition of a great country song: "Three chords and the truth."[3]
Three Dog Night As its members wrote just a handful of songs on the albums, most songs Three Dog Night recorded were written by outside songwriters. Notable hits by outside writers include Harry Nilsson's "One" (US #5), the Gerome Ragni-James Rado-Galt MacDermot composition "Easy to Be Hard" (US #4) from the musical Hair, Laura Nyro's "Eli's Comin'" (US #10), Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not to Come" (US #1), Paul Williams' "Out in the Country" (US #15), "The Family Of Man" (US #12), and "An Old Fashioned Love Song" (US #4), Hoyt Axton's "Joy to the World" (US #1) and "Never Been to Spain" (US #5), Arkin & Robinson's "Black and White" (US #1), Argent's Russ Ballard's "Liar" (US #7), Elton John and Bernie Taupin's "Lady Samantha" and "Your Song", Daniel Moore's "Shambala" (#3), Leo Sayer's "The Show Must Go On" (US #4), John Hiatt's "Sure As I'm Sittin' Here" (US #16), and Bush's "I Can Hear You Calling".