Gilbert O'Sullivan

There is a song from the early seventies, "Alone Again (Naturally)", that is one of the most melancholy and beautiful pop ever produced: a song about loneliness and loss, sung with disarming sweetness by a shy-looking Irishman with gentle manners called Gilbert O'Sullivan. Nobody, looking at him, would have said that this man was going to be at the centre of one of the most important legal battles in the history of music, or that his decision was going to rewrite the rules of hip hop and of all recorded music. But that is what happened. The softest man landed the biggest blow.

The man of sad songs

Gilbert O'Sullivan hit hard in the early seventies with a handful of songs of a sensitivity rare for the time: "Alone Again (Naturally)", which was number one in the United States, "Clair", "Get Down". He had a gift for restrained melodrama, for melodies that seem simple and stay stuck with you forever. "Alone Again" in particular is one of those songs that hurt beautifully, a portrait of loneliness so honest that it is still moving half a century later.

He was, to all appearances, as far from a revolutionary as you can get: a delicate songwriter, low-profile, closer to the melodic song than to furious rock. And yet his name is carved into history for something that has nothing to do with any melody.

The trial that changed everything

In 1991, the rapper Biz Markie used a piece of "Alone Again (Naturally)" in a song of his own, without authorisation or payment. In those years that was normal: hip hop had been built, to a large extent, by taking fragments of other people's records without much fuss. You sampled and that was that. Nobody asked.

Gilbert O'Sullivan said no. He sued. And the case, known as Grand Upright Music versus Warner Bros., ended with a ruling that shook the entire industry. The judge sided with O'Sullivan and opened his ruling, famously, with a biblical commandment: "Thou shalt not steal". With that it was established, for the first time and with the force of law, that sampling without authorisation is stealing, and that every borrowed fragment had to be licensed and paid for.

That ruling, from 1991, changed forever how music is made. Overnight, putting in a sample stopped being free and became expensive and complicated; producers had to start asking permission, paying, or replacing samples by playing the music again themselves. The entire way hip hop and much of pop has been built ever since is born, at bottom, from this Irish balladeer's lawsuit. The man of sad songs put a price on sampling for the whole world.

What to remember

Gilbert O'Sullivan was an Irish songwriter of uncommon sweetness, author of "Alone Again (Naturally)", one of the most melancholy and perfect songs of the seventies. And without seeking it, he became a central figure in the legal history of music: his 1991 lawsuit over an unauthorised use of that song established that sampling without permission is stealing, and rewrote the rules of the industry forever.

Remember it this way: the softest guy in pop, the one with the ballads that make you cry, turned out to be the one who changed the rules for everybody. Sometimes the hardest blow is landed by the gentlest hand.

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This text mentions a song whose lyrics deal with loss and dark thoughts. If you are going through a difficult time, in Chile you can call *4141, the suicide prevention line of the Ministry of Health, available 24 hours a day.

Sources

Gilbert O'Sullivan (Raymond Edward O'Sullivan), Irish singer-songwriter born on 1 December 1946 in Waterford, Ireland; he is alive. In the early seventies he had hits such as "Alone Again (Naturally)" (number one on the American Billboard Hot 100 in 1972), "Clair" and "Get Down". In 1991, his lawsuit over the unauthorised use of a sample of "Alone Again (Naturally)" in a song by the rapper Biz Markie led to the ruling Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc., issued on 17 December 1991 by Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy, whose decision began with the phrase "Thou shalt not steal"; the defendant had requested a licence for the song before releasing the record and, having failed to obtain it, released it anyway, which the court assessed as deliberate infringement. The ruling established that sampling without authorisation constitutes copyright infringement and transformed the practice of sampling in hip hop and the music industry, requiring every borrowed fragment to be licensed and paid for. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, GWU Music Copyright Infringement Resource, NPR and other coverage.