Gilbert O’Sullivan – Clair

A Thank You Note That Became A Family Record

Released in October 1972 as the lead single from Back to Front, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Clair” spent two weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart in November and peaked at number two in the United States, held from the top by Billy Paul and Carly Simon on consecutive weeks. The song also topped the charts in Canada, Ireland, and Norway, selling over a million copies and becoming O’Sullivan’s second consecutive Easy Listening chart topper. What sounds like a romantic ballad reveals itself as a babysitting story, complete with the three-year-old subject giggling at the end. O’Sullivan wrote it as gratitude to his manager Gordon Mills and wife Jo, whose daughter Clair he regularly watched while they attended fancy events. Mills even played the harmonica solo, making it truly a family affair.

The single dominated charts worldwide throughout late 1972 and early 1973. In the UK, it stayed at number one for two consecutive weeks starting November eleventh and remained on the charts for fourteen weeks total. Across the Atlantic, it climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in late December, spending sixteen weeks on the chart. It also hit number one on the Adult Contemporary chart for three weeks and reached number two in Cash Box. The song topped the Canadian RPM chart and spent fourteen weeks in the top forty there. Billboard ranked it number fifty-eight for the entire year of 1973. By year’s end, O’Sullivan had sold over ten million records in 1972 alone, and Record Mirror named him the top UK male singer of the year.

O’Sullivan had become close to the Mills family while living in a bungalow on Gordon’s estate during 1972. One of six children himself, he was comfortable with kids and offered to babysit when Gordon and Jo needed to attend industry functions. During those evenings, he’d wrestle with getting little Clair to bed, enduring the familiar battles over drinks of water and just one more minute of playtime. The song captures those moments with remarkable specificity, from ordering her back to bed to catching his breath after she’d worn him out. O’Sullivan has explained the song was meant as a present to the parents, acknowledging their trust and the joy their daughter brought him. Uncle Ray, mentioned in the lyric, is O’Sullivan himself, using his real first name Raymond.

The track was recorded in London during the summer of 1972 with Gordon Mills producing. O’Sullivan’s percussive piano style drives the arrangement, a technique he developed from his early days as a drummer in Rick Davies’ band Rick’s Blues back in Swindon. The song opens with O’Sullivan whistling before settling into its gentle melody, accompanied by strings and Mills’ harmonica solo that modulates up a semitone midway through. The production is quintessential early seventies soft pop, polished and sophisticated without sacrificing intimacy. That’s the real Clair laughing at the very end of the recording, her voice preserved in a moment that still moves her to tears decades later. The whole track feels like leafing through a family photo album set to music.

Back to Front hit number one on the UK Albums Chart in October 1972, cementing O’Sullivan’s status as the era’s best-selling British-based artist. The album showcased his new look, abandoning the Buster Keaton-inspired cloth cap and short trousers for a more masculine college style featuring sweaters with a large letter G. Critics praised his observational kitchen sink lyrics and show tune-inspired arrangements. The album spawned another North American hit with “Out of the Question,” which reached number seventeen in the US and number nine in Canada. O’Sullivan appeared on BBC’s Fifty Years of Music special in November and won the Ivor Novello Award for British Songwriter of the Year in May 1973. His pipe-smoking artefact collector persona made him an unlikely sex symbol.

The relationship between O’Sullivan and Mills eventually soured over royalties and management disputes. By 1977, they were locked in bitter legal battles that O’Sullivan ultimately won, gaining rights to all his songs and recordings in a landmark case that would later help Elton John and Sting. Mills died in 1986, but decades later Clair reconnected with O’Sullivan. In 2009, she and her mother Jo attended his concert at Royal Albert Hall. In 2017, Clair brought her own two children to watch O’Sullivan perform at Hyde Park with the BBC Concert Orchestra in front of twenty-five thousand people. When he sang her song, she burst into tears. The connection they’d shared when she was three remained unbroken, proof that some babysitting gigs last forever.

Nearly fifty years later, “Clair” endures as one of pop music’s most unusual love songs. It demonstrated that genuine affection doesn’t require romance, that an adult can write beautifully about a child without anything sinister lurking underneath. The song exists in a more innocent time, before every gesture was scrutinized, when uncle figures could dote on their friends’ children without suspicion. O’Sullivan captured a fleeting moment of childhood chaos with such warmth that it transcended the specifics and became universal. Anyone who’s ever tried to get a stubborn kid to sleep recognizes every word, and anyone who remembers being that stubborn kid might feel a pang of nostalgia for when their biggest rebellion was demanding one more glass of water.