1. Boz Scaggs personnel

2. Frankie Valli version

3. Other early versions

4. Rita Coolidge version

5. Chart performance
    Weekly charts  Year-end charts 

6. Other versions

7. See also

8. References

9. External links

"We're All Alone" is a song written by Boz Scaggs, which became a 1977 top-ten hit for Rita Coolidge in the US and the UK. Scaggs introduced it on his 1976 album Silk Degrees. The song was first a hit for Frankie Valli. Scaggs included it as the B-side of two of the four single releases from that LP, including "Lido Shuffle."

Boz Scaggs personnel

• Boz Scaggs – guitar, lead vocals
• Fred Tackett – guitar
• Louis Shelton – guitar, acoustic guitar
• David Hungate – bass
• Jeff Porcaro – drums
• David Paich – arrangements, piano
• Sid Sharp – string conductor and concertmaster
• Horns – Tony Terran, Vincent DeRosa, Jim Horn, Paul Hubinon, Dick Hyde, Plas Johnson, Tom Scott, Bud Shank

Frankie Valli version

A heartfelt ballad which closed Silk Degrees, "We're All Alone" garnered attention soon after the album's March 1976 release. Frankie Valli had a single version from his Valli LP which reached #78 U.S. in August 1976 (#74 Cash Box, #27 Adult Contemporary; Canada #73 Pop, #36 AC).^[1]

Other early versions

The Walker Brothers - one of Scaggs' formative influences^[2] - cut "We're All Alone" for their Lines album; the track had an October 1976 single release in the UK where the Frankie Valli version had a single release that July; the Walker Brothers' version did reach #22 in the Netherlands in August 1977 a month before the Rita Coolidge version reached the Dutch charts.

In March 1977, the version by the Three Degrees - recorded for the album Standing Up For Love - was a UK single release meaning that the Rita Coolidge version of "We're All Alone" which reached UK #7 that summer was the fourth UK single release to feature the song as an A-side. That same month, C&W singer LaCosta had a single release of "We're All Alone" in both the US - where it charted at #75 C&W - and also the UK where the track was the B-side of a remake of "I Second That Emotion". Also, in the spring of 1977 a version by Bruce Murray was an airplay item in Canada.

Scaggs' own version of "We're All Alone" was the standard B-side of his international single release "Lido Shuffle" including its release in the US and UK where "Lido Shuffle" respectively charted at #11 and #13. However, in Australia Scaggs' "We're All Alone" was issued with "Lowdown" as the flip to become a double A-side chart entry reaching #54 in the autumn of 1977, the only evident instance of the Scaggs original charting.

In a 1976 interview with Creem magazine, Scaggs stated that Michael Jackson had cut versions of "We're All Alone" and "What Can I Say" — both from Silk Degrees — but if so, these tracks have never been released.^[3]

Rita Coolidge version

The Rita Coolidge version of "We're All Alone" was featured on the album Anytime...Anywhere released in March 1977.

Coolidge would recall: "When I was with A&M Records, it was like a family. I would visit Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, and it was a very open, communicative group of people. One day I was in Jerry Moss' office and he said that the Boz Scaggs album Silk Degrees was in a million homes and there was a song on it that was perfect for a woman to sing. He said, 'It's called "We're All Alone" and as he's not doing it as a single, I think you ought to record it.'"^[4]

The original lyrics of "We're All Alone" include lines "Close your eyes ami" and "Throw it to the wind my love". Coolidge sings these lines as "Close your eyes and dream" and "Owe it to the wind my love".

Although the first single off the US release of Anytime...Anywhere was "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher", "We're All Alone" was the first single taken off the album in the UK where it reached #6 in August 1977 when "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher" was moving up the US Top 10; that same month "We're All Alone" reached #6 in Ireland. In September Coolidge's version of "We're All Alone" entered the Dutch charts where it would peak at #15 (in August the Walker Brothers' version had reached #22 on the Dutch charts).

The second single from Anytime...Anywhere in the US, "We're All Alone" there ascended to #7 that September: the track also received enough airplay in the C&W market to reach #68 on the C&W chart.

"We're All Alone" was the first of Coolidge's two Adult Contemporary #1 hits ^[5] - the second would be "All Time High" - and after "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher" was her second single to be certified gold for US sales of 1,000,000.

In December 1977, "We're All Alone" entered the charts in Australia to remain for 16 weeks with a #32 peak - the original Boz Scaggs version had been a minor Australian hit in the autumn of 1977 reaching #54 in a tandem charting with its flip "Lowdown".

In New Zealand, Coolidge's "We're All Alone" charted with a #34 peak in February 1978.

Reportedly the concurrent availability of both the Boz Scaggs original and the Coolidge version of "We're All Alone" at radio stations (and their versions having the same key and tempo) moved some disc jockeys to splice together the two tracks into one unofficial duet (a trend that had begun two years prior with the two concurrently released solo versions of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers"),{{citation needed|date=August 2017}} in spite of the fact that the spliced duet version of "We're All Alone" was already receiving rave reviews by fans and DJs alike. However, unlike "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", which featured Columbia Records label mates Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond, Skaggs and Coolidge were signed to competing record companies which, for whatever reason, declined to allow the two to remake the song as an official, separate single.

Coolidge remade "We're All Alone" for her 2005 jazz release And So Is Love: Elysa Gardner of USA Today opined that Coolidge "brings a new wistfulness and knowing to her own hit of yore...proving that good interpretive singers, like fine wine, improve with age."

Chart performance

Weekly charts

Frankie Valli

Rita Coolidge

Year-end charts

Other versions

Other versions of "We're All Alone" have been recorded by Beat Crusaders, Maj Britt ("Alene Her"), Cecilio & Kapono, Petula Clark ("On est tout seul"), Anne Cochran, Ben Cramer ("Gelukkig Zijn"), Linda Eder, René Froger, Monica Forsberg, René Froger, Bob James, Salena Jones, Kiri Te Kanawa, Engelbert Humperdinck, Arja Koriseva ("Me Kaksi Vain"), Kisu Jernström ("Niin yksin oon"), Steve Lawrence, Liesbeth List ("Vertrouwd Gevoel"), Johnny Mathis, Reba McEntire with Jose e Durval ("Solo yo, sola tu"), Natalia, Newton, Mary O'Hara, Natalia Oreiro and also Manolo Otero ("Estamos Todos Solos"), Päivi ("Kun Luonain Oot"), Zsa Zsa Padilla, Pieces of a Dream, Rico J. Puno, Patty Pravo ("Da Soli Noi"), Kurt Ravn, Collin Raye, Gilberto Santa Rosa ("Impaciencia"), Doreen Shaffer, Stutz Bear Cats, Masayoshi Takanaka, Scott Walker, Susan Wong, Yulia (singer), and Emil Chau (1992).

The 1997 release California Dreamin, a project comprising a cappella versions of soft rock classics credited to the West Coast All Stars, featured "We're All Alone" with a lead vocal by Bill Champlin: the other members of the West Coast All Stars were Jason Scheff, Bobby Kimball and Joseph Williams.

In 2005 bilingual singer Angela Aki of Japanese and Italian-American descent released a version of "We're All Alone" with her own Japanese lyrics retaining one verse in the original English.

Japanese rock band Beat Crusaders did a cover of this song.

A Dutch version (Gelukkig zijn) exists by Ben Cramer.

See also

• List of number-one adult contemporary singles of 1977 (U.S.)

References

External links

• Song Lyrics
• {{YouTube|_9yNqcMKEyo|Listen to "We're All Alone"}} (Frankie Valli)
• {{YouTube|V3qSuH-NLwo|Listen to "We're All Alone"}} (Rita Coolidge)

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