As a songwriter, I've often struggled with songs that get away from me and try to be something different than I intended.

That probably sounds a little strange, but other songwriters will know exactly what I'm talking about: a snatch of lyric inspires a melody, an idea forms, then while you're guiding it into being it takes on a different quality and turns out to be about something different than you thought it would be.

I'm betting that's what happened to poor Gilbert O'Sullivan when he was writing "Alone Again (Naturally)." How did that come about? The lyric is essentially a suicide note, but the music came out sounding like a comedic Robert Charlebois song. Did Gilbert have a melody in mind but was so depressed that the lyric came out inappropriately sad? Probably not. It sounds like he had this tragic lyric brewing, but being schooled in the art of pop music writing, the bouncy tune was as sad as he was capable of.


I started looking for cover versions, assuming that someone in later years would have identified the heartwrenching depression at the core of the lyric and tried to drag the music in that direction. Surprisingly, although there are several covers out there, some alter the lyrics and others find even less connection between the mood of the music and the lyrics than O'Sullivan's original. Of all the covers the only one I quite liked (aside from my surprise that Donny Osmond actually improved a little on the original in terms of matching the mood to the lyric) was this one by Ian Shaw, who I've never heard of: