Clair

Album

Evolution

Label

Mam

Genre

Soft Rock

Duration

0:00

Composer(s)

Raymond O'Sullivan

Entered Chart

Oct 28, 1972

Peak Date

Dec 30, 1972

Released

October 1972

Recorded

Unknown

Catalog #

MAM 3626

B-Side

Ooh-Wakka-Doo-Wakka-Day

For most of this song, Gilbert O'Sullivan sounds like he's singing to his (much) younger girlfriend. It gets more and more awkward as he gets firm with her and orders her back in bed, but then he reveals he is not Clair's boyfriend, but her babysitter. Clair is a real girl, the 3-year-old daughter of O'Sullivan's manager, Gordon Mills. Gilbert did indeed babysit her and experienced the joy and pain that comes from spending time with a delightful little girl who won't go to bed. That's the real Clair laughing at the end of the song. In a Songfacts interview with O'Sullivan, he said the song is really for Clair's parents, Gordon and Jo. "They would ring me up and say they had to go to some big do, and I would babysit," he said. "I'm one of six, so I'm used to kids. The song was written as a 'thank you' to the parents, and she laughs at the end. Gordon plays the harmonica solo, so it's pretty much a family record." In America, this was the follow-up to Sullivan's smash hit "Alone Again (Naturally)," which topped the chart for six weeks. "Clair" was also a huge hit there, but it was far bigger in the UK, where it went to #1. O'Sullivan had another chart-topper there with "Get Down." "Uncle Ray" in the lyric was not inserted to rhyme with "hearing you say," but alludes to Ray O'Sullivan, Gilbert's real name. Alas, this is a love song that had a most unhappy ending in real life. Gordon Mills, the father of Clair, was the man who can be said to have created Gilbert O'Sullivan. The Irishman was born Raymond Edward O'Sullivan, and moved to the North of England as a boy when his father was offered a job. After finishing art college, Raymond moved to the capital to chase the dream, a path taken by countless songwriters and other artistes before and since, successful and not so. He got lucky when a workmate who had a contract with CBS gave him an intro to the company, and he was signed up for a five-year deal, which must have been music to his ears at the time, but led precisely nowhere. Eventually, he came to the attention of Gordon Mills, who knew the music industry inside out, having been both a performer and a songwriter before moving over to the business side. (He co-wrote "It's Not Unusual," the song that launched the career of Tom Jones). Mills signed O'Sullivan to MAM, changed his name, and the world was his oyster. Alas, as often happens when a star arrives, he decides he is being underpaid, while the person who guided him to fame and fortune believes Mr. Ten Percent should receive a larger slice of the pie. Their relationship, which had been as much friendship as business, ended in the courts. After years of litigation, O'Sullivan came out on top; the London Times of May 6, 1982 reported that "agreements made between Mr. O'Sullivan and Mr. Mills and his company, Management Agency and Music Ltd [were] 'an unreasonable restraint of trade.'" Among other things, O'Sullivan won control of his songs and master tapes. According to a July 1995 article by Grace Bradberry, the court case left Mills humiliated, his company collapsed, his wife divorced him, and he died in 1986 a broken man. >> Jo Mills and Clair reunited with O'Sullivan in 2009 when they watched him perform at Royal Albert Hall in London. In 2017, Clair came to O'Sullivan's concert in Hyde Park, where he performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra. "My daughters were with her," he told Songfacts. "She said when I sang 'Clair' in front of 25, 30 thousand people, she had tears in her eyes. The song means a lot to her. She's very grown up now, with two children of her own, but I still have that relationship with her."

Clair
The moment I met you, I swear
I felt as if something, somewhere,
Had happened to me, which I couldn't see
And then, the moment I met you, again
I knew in my heart that we were friends
It had to be so, it couldn't be no

But try as hard as I might do, I don't know why
You get to me in a way I can't describe
Words mean so little when you look up and smile
I don't care what people say, to me you're more than a child

Oh Clair
Clair

Clair
If ever a moment so rare
Was captured for all to compare
That moment is you in all that you do
But why in spite of our age difference do I cry
Each time I leave you I feel I could die
Nothing means more to me than hearing you say,
"I'm going to marry you. Will you marry me Uncle Ray?"

Oh Clair
Clair

Clair
I've told you before "Don't you dare!"
"Get back into bed"
"Can't you see that it's late"
"No you can't have a drink"
"Oh allright then, but wait just a minute"

While I, in an effort to babysit
Capture my breath
What there is left of it
You can be murder at this hour of the day
But in the morning the sun will see my lifetime away
Oh Clair
Clair
Oh Clair