This, That, and the Other

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to respond to this challenge by either using the prompt word “nothing,” or going with the above picture, or by any song about a guy who declares his love for the girl he wants in his life, or going with anything else that we think fits.

What I think fits is not so much about a guy who declares his love for a girl, but about a guy who wants to know what she brings to the table. The song, “Nothing From Nothing,” by Billy Preston, is about a man telling his lover that she needs to bring more to the relationship than she’s bringing.

From its opening salvo, the song’s meaning is fairly straight-forward: Nothin’ from nothin’ means nothin’. You got to have something if you want to be with me. Preston is saying that he can only get into a relationship with someone who already has money:

I'm not tryna be your hero
'Cause that zero is too cold for me, brrr
I'm not tryin' to be your highness
'Cause that minus is too low to see, yeah

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
And I'm not stuffin', believe you me
Don't you remember I told ya
I'm a soldier in the war on poverty, yeah, yes, I am

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you wanna be with me, oh baby

Preston started writing this song one night in the dressing room of an Atlanta nightclub where he was performing. He wanted to write a song based on the saying, “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.” He explained, “The saloon piano gave it character, and I had a feeling it would be a hit because it was a sing-a-long kind of thing.”

And he was right, it was a hit. The song was co-written by Billy Preston and Bruce Fisher and was recorded by Billy Preston for his 1974 album The Kids & Me. It reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week in October 1974, becoming Preston’s second solo chart-topper in the United States (following his 1973 hit “Will It Go Round in Circles”). It spent four and a half months on the chart.

Interesting factoid: Preston performed this song on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. He and Janis Ian were the musical guests on the show’s October 11, 1975 debut.