Gilbert O’Sullivan – Himself (1971)

Firstly – the name is ridiculous, and the street urchin schoolboy image not much better.  But, boy, could he write songs – and not a bad voice either.  Real name Raymond O’Sullivan was Irish born and English bred.  He was writing songs from an early age and was hawking them around for a year or two with no luck, a handful of singles flopped too – then he caught the ear of Gordon Mills who became his manager and early mentor.  A hit single with ‘Nothing Rhymed’, followed by this album.  It is certainly ‘poppy’ but was full of excellent songs which were witty and thoughtful with great tunes and the production was spot-on.  Then he followed this up with far more middle of the road ballads and ended up having hits for a couple of years but drifting further away from originality as the years went on.  He has, to his credit, continued releasing albums to the present day but nothing I have heard has ever come close to this brilliant debut – best songs are ‘Matrimony’, ‘Permissive Twit’ and ‘Thunder and Lightning’ – but all the other songs are excellent too.