This song has been an earworm for me for at least the past four months. I suppose there’s no accounting for how one’s subconscious chooses one’s earworms.
Gilbert O’Sullivan recorded it in 1971.
As to his gimmicky stage name, it was chosen by his manager, Gordon Mills , who had already given the world two other gimmicky-named artists, Engelbert Humperdinck and Tom Jones. I can wonder if a pre-packaged commercial product is capable of producing anything of merit. But, after all, The Monkees did.
There is an intricate rhyme scheme, as illustrated by the third stanza:
Looking back over the yearsat whatever else that appears,I remember I criedwhen my father died,never wishing to hidethe tears.He was sixty-five years old.My mother, God rest her soul,couldn’t understandwhy the only manshe had ever loved had been taken,leaving her to startwith a heartso badly broken.Despite encouragement from me, no words were ever spoken.And when she passed away,I cried and cried all day,Alone again (naturally).
Each phrase of the lyrics exactly matches a phrase of the melody.
He has an unusual voice. I have always assumed that his natural voice is actually so squeaky as to be unsuitable for live performance; that it was repeatedly over-dubbed to make it sound more robust on recordings. This is the same technique by which Freddie Mercury made it sound as if a stadium full of people were chanting, “We will, we will rock you.”
But it turns out not to be so.
I link to a clip from Japanese television, that makes it clear beyond doubt that that is in fact his natural voice; and also, that he wrote the piano part himself.
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