[2] At the age of 13 he won a scholarship to the University of Southern California for Musical composition, but dropped out after six months, bored with the conventional regimen.
Nolan also had ambition to perform – he supplied the falsetto that dominated "Get Dancin'" – and, after a short tenure with Firefly, he moved onto the studio group The Eleventh Hour.
"I Like Dreamin'" was released by the Eleventh Hour's label, 20th Century, and in early November it finally entered the U.S. chart, to begin a three-month crawl to its peak at No.
Nolan followed it the spring after with the top 20 hit "Love's Grown Deep", taken from his self-titled album; he was named Number One New Pop Singles Artist of 1977 by Billboard magazine.
Night Miracles followed two years later, bringing a new single, "Us and Love (We Go Together)", to the mid-reaches of the chart in early 1980, but it failed to give Nolan any further major success.