Live Report: Gilbert O’Sullivan takes his wonderfully peculiar songbook into full orchestral flight at a rapturous 3Arena

The band strides on and settles into the majesty of ‘Too Much Attention’, laying down the groove while we wait for Gilbert. At the helm is guitarist and Clonakilty native Bill Shanley, one of the greatest sidemen in the business, who took his first lessons from the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Noel Redding and went on to become Ray Davies’s musical director. Safe to say he knows his way around an intricate songbook, and tonight he has plenty of firepower - brass, flute, a string quartet, backing singers and a rhythm section ready to throw down some muscle behind O’Sullivan’s familiar melodies. Hell, even the Dublin Gospel Choir make an appearance.

Gilbert breezes in - lean, cool and sprightly, sporting an enviable head of hair, and takes his place, centre stage at his keyboard and plunges into a catalogue that trucks through Orchestral Pop, Country, Vaudeville, Soul, Music Hall, Rock and everything in between.

Early in the set, introducing ‘Nothing Rhymed’, Gilbert recalls recording in a big-time studio for the first time. On the massive screens, a photograph shows the young artist at the garden shed where he began creating songs that would take on the world. The distance travelled is gargantuan.

For a spell in the early Seventies, Gilbert O’Sullivan was deep in the bloodstream of American Pop, sharing the AM-radio landscape with Elton John, Carole King, Neil Diamond and the Carpenters. ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’ spent six weeks at No. 1 in 1972, slipping suicidal despair and bereavement into the sunshine of the dial, finishing as the year’s second-biggest single. ‘Clair’ reached No. 2; ‘Get Down’ made No. 7. When Hozier’s ‘Too Sweet’ reached the summit of the US charts in 2024, the list of Irish chart-toppers comprised just five songs - those two bookends; U2’s ‘With or Without You’ and ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’; and Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Almost 52 years separated O’Sullivan and the next Irish male solo chart-topper.

But let’s hurry back to this evening’s proceedings and the joyous crowd, who are in fine form and deserve special mention as throughout the set - they sing, wave their phones, sway, hold hands and marvellously boogie.

Gilbert O'Sullivan at 3Arena on October 10, 2026. Copyright Zoltán Szabo/hotpress.com

‘Nothing Rhymed’ remains immense - its orchestral treatment drawing out the uneasiness beneath the sweetness. These songs have lived on the radio for decades, their melodies absorbed almost without our knowing. Assembled tonight, their strangeness becomes unmistakable. Sentences tumble across bar lines; lyrics take unexpected turns, and choruses arrive by routes you would struggle to retrace. Even knowing the words doesn’t necessarily make singing along straightforward.

Gilbert slips in new song ‘Don’t Shout’, from his forthcoming album On The Record, which drops next month - his wonderful backing singers jocularly bantering with him. ‘Miss My Love Today’ is about as lo-fi as orchestral pop can get - a warbling flute, Gilbert’s vocal and a creeping melancholy. Here is something iceberg-like beneath the surface; the emotional mass only gradually revealing itself.

‘We Will’ carries an almost ‘Age of Aquarius’ glow, and an excellent story. American pop icon Andy Williams phoned O’Sullivan in the Seventies asking to record it, but wanted to change “I bagsy being in goal”, an expression he didn’t understand. Gilbert refused; the proposed cover went no further. Even the prospect of an American star recording his song couldn’t prise that small childhood detail loose and it receives a fine airing tonight.

We’re moving at some clip - a little over half an hour in and we’re already clocking up ten songs. Andrea Corr’s arrival for ‘Is That You?’, from the forthcoming album, supplies a sweet Country interlude - it’s chicka-boom, chicka-boom rhythm swirling about the pair, standing together at their microphones.

Gilbert O'Sullivan at 3Arena on October 10, 2026. Copyright Zoltán Szabo/hotpress.com

O’Sullivan addresses Russia’s war against Ukraine before rehearsing the audience for ‘Where Peaceful Waters Flow’. Then ‘Ooh Wakka Doo Wakka Day’, his buoyant 1972 single, lets the whimsical, kitchen-sink wordplay tumble over its piano-driven pop. ‘Clair’, another hit from that extraordinary year, brings a fresh surge of recognition.

‘Houdini Said’ surges towards the West End - musical theatre, vaudeville and full choral flourishes - Gilbert’s Big Band throw the kitchen sink at it. Imagine Elvis’s TCB band tackling Gershwin and you’re mapping some of the territory.

They change gears on ‘Happiness Is Me and You’ - just vocal and guitar and the most tender turn of phrase, lending the performance an exposed sincerity that holds its own against all the instrumental muscle. ‘What’s In A Kiss’ and ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’ trundle us towards the finish, the latter setting the audience swaying under its remarkable weight of sorrow. Then the encore detonates. A frenetic, funky ‘Matrimony’ and a jubilant ‘Get Down’ send people dancing in the aisles.

It’s been one hell of a party at the mouth of the Liffey. Gilbert Abú!