Gilbert O'Sullivan

And it was extraordinarily welcome.

But I've been to Waterford a few times since I went to see Gilbert O'Sullivan there last year.

I went to the Time Museum.

I went to the Cathedral.

You know, there's so many chins in the Chinese, in the Chinese phone book.

Same thing with, with, with, with in the United States, there's so many Irish Sullivan's, you know, you got Gilbert Sullivan who, uh, sang that song, uh, all in again, naturally you got the guy Sullivan who, who, who put the plane down in the, in the Hudson river 15 years ago.

So, um, you know, it's not hard to find Sullivan, but it's kind of hard to find Sullivan who's going to run for governor or Senate in, in, in Alaska.

Um, so what I would do is, um, I would, I would press, uh, charges against the Sullivan who doesn't have a, a party backing and charge him with fraud.

Sampling went through the courts, and it got ugly.

In 1991, Biz Markie was sued for sampling a Gilbert O'Sullivan song.

Judge Kevin Duffy opened his ruling with, Thou shall not steal, and referenced the case for possible prosecution.

Biz named his next album All Samples Cleared.

And for me, part of the fun of the book was the way it turned me on to Christmas songs I'd never heard of before.

One was Gilbert O'Sullivan's Christmas Song.

In the States in the early 70s, we knew him from the soft pop hits Alone Again Naturally and Claire.

But in 1974, he also got into the Christmas song game with Christmas Song.

The easy answer is the lyrics.

Like, if you're listening to a fucking sad song that's talking about something that's sad and relatable, you're going to be sad, you know? Like, if you're listening to fucking Johnny Cash talk about death or, like, what's Alone Again? Uh, Alone Again by Gilbert O'Sullivan is talking about how, like, his wife left him at the altar.

And, like, everybody hates him.

Like, it's a fucking shitty song.

like proto glam, you know? Yeah.

And, and also easier listening stuff too, like Gilbert O'Sullivan.

Right.

Yeah.

We've got a few more here, right? Milt, A, without you, Harry Nilsson.

B, alone again naturally, Gilbert O'Sullivan.

C, American Pie, Don McLean.

That's too easy.

No.

Okay.

Although it's funny, the two favorites of the pod, without you, Harry Nilsson, and alone again, naturally, Gilbert O'Sullivan.

Milt, here's a group here.

11th of November, 1972.

Who was number one at that time, Tony, with a song called Claire? Oh, Gilbert O'Sullivan.

Gilbert O'Sullivan.

I don't know if you want to do a rendition.

No, I never want to hear it again.

And that contrast seems to run through a lot of your work.

I think of Gilbert O'Sullivan is like that a lot, writes a lot of these happy, you know, kind of bouncy songs.

But once you read the lyrics, you're like, yee, what's going on over here? So talk to me a little bit about that dichotomy, those two things working together, the melodic music and, of course, the more serious content, the more serious topics.

So I always gravitated towards light music.

And then he sung My Funny Valentine, like lisping because it was tea that was just knocked out on him.

there's something about that that's really beautiful and it's always more beautiful than anyone who's depressed and singing like very dark stuff it's just too one-on-one for me yeah i think that's the thing that i but i'm looking

for yeah uh who else can we think of uh gilbert Gilbert O'Sullivan comes to mind.

Who else does that? Has a really...