AND CLIMBING TO THE TOP,
I'LL THROW MYSELF OFF ...

Promises, promises, Gil.  If only.

There are those out there a few years my senior who consider this to be one of the worst songs ever played on the radio.  I sympathize, since I feel that way about Seasons In The Sun for what I suspect are the exact same reasons.  Doubtless Alone Again, Naturally received approximately the same kind of daisy-cutter saturation airplay Terry Jacks's little effluvium did, a few years later. 

I do remember hearing the Gilbert O'Sullivan song, though not with great frequency, and yes -- it's every bit as self-pitying and bathetic as Seasons. I just think it's perhaps a hair less cloying musically, though had I heard it a million times a week, I might find no difference between the two songs.

Okay, I know it's like saying, 'eat this apple instead of that one; there are fewer worms in it.' 

Unlike Terry Jacks -- who shat one very smelly turd into the culture pool, and then scatted off to save fishies somewhere -- O'Sullivan did actually carry on.  He's released albums as late as 1997, to what Allmusic reports is a devoted cult following, mostly in Japan.  

I would laugh about that, but Cheap Trick blasted into the U.S. after having survived for several years on just such a following, and Todd Rundgren's fan base includes a large Asian contingent, as well.

Not that I'm comparing the three artistically (even to compare him to Cheap Trick would be a kind of sacrilege), I'm simply saying that the Japanese often like what we in the West find too novel, too byzantine, too precious or too obscure to appreciate immediately.  Reference Hello Kitty, if you need one.  And they also, apparently, like Gil O'Sullivan.

Besides, the guy released a song called Claire, a few years later, that got some Stateside airplay and wasn't half as bad as Alone Again, Naturally.  So he wasn't a total one-hit wonder.  Like Terry 'goodbye papa please pray for me' Jacks.  Who quit his burgeoning career in the music business to save the whales.  Or save Wales.  Or something.  Don't ask me -- I projectile vomit every time I hear his name.