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54: GILBERT O'SULLIVAN
We Will/I Didn't Know What To Do
(MAM, 1971)

IT OFTEN seems as though Gilbert O'Sullivan is almost written out of history when the talk turns to great British songwriters.

Fair enough, he was born in southern Ireland, but he was largely brought up in Swindon - and it isn't his birthright which is in question here anyway, but the inexplicable fact that a composer of his calibre isn't rubbing shoulders with Ray Davies, Lennon/McCartney, Difford/Tilbrook and Elvis Costello in the firmament of songwriting stardust.

He was plenty big in the early 1970s, however. At that time, the child me adored comparatively makeweight fodder such as Clair and, in particular, Get Down. At the age of 11, there was no finer combination in my world than that of pop music and dogs.

The older I got, however, the more I came to appreciate the quizzical but matter-of-fact melancholy of those stupendous early singles, in particular the holy trinity of Nothing Rhymed, Alone Again (Naturally) and We Will.

O'Sullivan's unique gift was to make his painstakingly crafted lyrics and melodies tumble and flow with the natural cadences of everyday speech. There can be no better example of this approach than We Will, in which low-key vignettes of the sweet routines of family life hint at an oceanic sadness.

This is poetry:
It's over now,
you've had your fun,
Get up them stairs
go on, quickly, don't run...
Take off your shoes
the both of youse
leave them down
outside the door...
Turn the landing light
off, no wait, leave it on
It might make the night
that much easier to be gone, and in the morning
who'll be wide awake
and eating snowflakes
as opposed to those flakes?
That simple imagery, and the contrasting, unspoken weight of feeling behind it, floors me every time.

The children's voices in the choruses may be too saccharine for some tastes, but between them and O'Sullivan's responses the phrase "we will" is batted back and forth in a poignant litany poised between hope, reassurance and uncertainty. A masterpiece, nothing less.

10:35am Friday 1st February 2008

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