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Nobody's Child

Written by: Cy Coben and Mel Foree (cover version) Performed by: The Traveling Wilburys Length: 3:28 Album: Originally a 1990 charity single; bonus track on The Traveling Wilburys Collection (Vol. 3 disc)

Unlike every other song in the Wilburys catalog, "Nobody's Child" isn't an original composition. It's a cover, recorded during the Vol. 3 sessions in June 1990 specifically as a charity single benefiting Olivia Harrison's Romanian Angel Appeal, a cause supporting children affected by the conditions uncovered in Romanian orphanages following the fall of the Ceaușescu regime. The song also lent its title to a larger multi-artist fundraising compilation album the Harrisons put together for the same cause.

The band paused work on their own record to cut and release this one, entirely outside the usual Wilburys mythology of pseudonyms and inside jokes. This wasn't a bit. It was George and Olivia Harrison's bandmates showing up to help with something that mattered to them personally.

The song went unreleased on either official Wilburys album at the time, surfacing only as a standalone charity single until the 2007 reissue folded it into the Vol. 3 disc as a bonus track, giving it a permanent home in the catalog nearly two decades later.

See the other Vol. 3 bonus track, Runaway, or read more about the 2007 reissue.