This might not seem the most cheerful of themes, but it struck me that it would be good to follow up on my post for Mental Health Awareness Week with a musical homage taking MHAW’s theme as a starting point. I’ve shared again an image from that post as today’s header, just to re-emphasise the points I made then. So this week’s tunes all feature the word lonely in their title, apart from one, which has a synonym instead.

I’ve played this first one before, but it was a long while ago and I couldn’t really leave it out, could I:

Andrew Gold’s Lonely Boy describes a boy who felt that his parents had made him a promise that he would be their only one, and then felt badly let down when they gave him a sister. Many of the details – especially the dates – match his own life but he denied that the song was autobiographical, saying that he’d had a happy childhood. The song was first released on Andrew’s second album, What’s Wrong With This Picture, in 1976 and became a single in 1977. The single peaked at #11 in the UK and #7 in the US. The album, which was generally given poor reviews, didn’t chart in the UK and only reached #95 in the US. I enjoyed it, though, and had a lot of fun finding the deliberate errors on the album sleeve. As well as making his own records Andrew produced many others, including Linda Ronstadt’s Heart Like A Wheel, and he was a long time member of Linda’s band. Linda provided harmony vocals on the original recording of this one.

This next one is one that I’ve always liked:

The Police first released So Lonely as a single in November 1978, to coincide with the release of their debut album, Outlandos d’Amour, on which it was included. It didn’t chart as a single at that time, but was re-released in February 1980 and reached #6 in the UK chart, though it wasn’t a hit in the US. The album also peaked at #6 in the UK, and reached #23 in the US. It gained Platinum disc status in both countries, as well as in Australia, Canada, France and the Netherlands, and is generally regarded as one of the best debut albums in rock music. I thought it was great, and played it a lot back then.

Time for a pop classic now, I think:

Roy Orbison had previously had a couple of minor hits in the US, but Only The Lonely was the one that changed everything and made him an international star. Released in May 1960, it reached #2 in the US and got to #1 in the UK. The track was included on Roy’s debut album, Lonely And Blue, released in January 1961, which peaked at #14 in the UK but didn’t make the US chart. His voice was always a thing of beauty, and he added his unique talents to the Traveling Wilburys albums in later years. One of those who was taken from us way too soon.

As you will probably have noticed, I like to add in a few songs which I think will be unfamiliar to many. This next one is one such:

Trampled by Turtles are an American bluegrass-influenced folk band. They were formed in 2003 and have released nine full albums, three of which have reached #1 on the US bluegrass chart. We All Get Lonely is on their May 2018 album Life Is Good On The Open Road, which was one of those #1s and also got to #133 in the main US album chart. They aren’t well known outside the US but I’ve always liked what I’ve heard from them – Dave Simonett’s plaintive voice is really suited to songs like this, and if you look it up on YouTube you’ll see that it meant a lot for people during the early stages of the pandemic.

From the obscure to the ‘probably not as well known as they should be’ category next. I loved this band, saw them play live twice, and still enjoy listening to their music today, but their level of success across the pond wasn’t great:

That is billed as being by Thin Lizzy, and is on their YouTube page, but this was originally a separate project by the band’s leader, Phil Lynott. Dear Miss Lonely Hearts is a track on his first solo album, Solo In Soho, which was released in April 1980 and got to #28 in the UK albums chart. Although it was officially a solo recording other Thin Lizzy band members played on it, as you can see from the video. YouTube shows this as being ©️1977, which is either a mistake or they took a long time getting the album out! This track was released as a single, also in April 1980, and reached #32 in the UK. Another track from the album – Yellow Pearl – was later remixed and reissued, and became the theme music for the BBC’s Top Of The Pops show for several years. Phil Lynott is another who was taken from us at a tragically young age – a sad end for the guy who was probably the coolest man on the planet.

This next one was just an album track, so I’m having to stick with an audio-only clip for it. There are a couple of live performances on YouTube but their sound quality isn’t great, so I went with this:

This was a track on The Wallflowers’ second album, Bringing Down The Horse, released in May 1996 and peaking at #4 in the US and #58 in the UK, though it did top the charts in New Zealand. This came out in the days when I had a long commuter drive around the North Circular Road in London, and I played this album to death during that time: I thought it was a fantastic album then, and still do. The band were led by Jakob Dylan, who wrote most of their songs, including this one – yes, he does have a famous dad.

Another one that may not be known to you is my next selection. I’ve played Sarah Darling’s music before, but not for a while, and as I’m a big fan of hers I couldn’t resist including this one. This is a live performance in a small radio studio, and the audience are very respectful, allowing Sarah’s beautiful voice to be heard as it should:

As Sarah says in her intro, she had just released this on an EP at the time of this recording, which took place in February 2013. The EP was Home To Me and, like everything else she has done, I think it’s great. She hasn’t had much chart success, though she did have a #1 on the UK country chart in 2019 with her album Wonderland. A previous album, Dream Country, has been streamed more than 4m times on Spotify and Apple Music – not all of them by me! – and she has played the Grand Ole Opry several times, the first of these at the invitation of Brad Paisley. She has a loyal following here in the UK as well as in parts of her homeland (she comes from Des Moines, Iowa), and was a huge part of my early pandemic days: she did a weekly Facebook session from her home, just her and her guitar, and showed herself to be not just an accomplished musician and songwriter but also a lovely, charming person too.

I said at the outset that one of my tunes for today used a synonym in its title, and I’ve saved it till last. It may well be much more familiar than some of today’s other selections, I think:

Solitary Man was Neil Diamond’s first official single, released in April 1966 and reaching #55 in the US and #59 in the UK. It was also the opening track on his debut album, The Feel Of Neil Diamond, which was released in August 1966, getting to the giddy heights of #137 in the US – that may or may not have been partly due to its bloody awful title. As you will no doubt know his career really took off a few years later, and he has sold more than 130m records worldwide. This was played a lot on the pirate radio stations here, which is how I came to hear it, and it has been a favourite of mine ever since. Those pirate radio days were great – as a young teenager they were so exciting, much more than the stuffy old BBC, and introduced me to much more music than I could ever have heard ‘legally.’ If you want to know what they were like, I recommend the movie The Boat That Rocked – it’s a bit of fun and froth, and the music is great.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my selection of lonely songs: I’ve tried to give you my usual mix and include some I doubt you’ll have heard before. As you listen to them, I hope you think back to why I chose this theme, and follow the advice given for last week’s Mental Health Awareness Week campaign. I’ll see you again soon. Until then, stay well 😊