"We're All Alone" | |
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Single by Boz Scaggs | |
from the album Silk Degrees | |
A-side | "What Can I Say", "Lido Shuffle" |
Released | November 1976 |
Length | 4:12 |
Label | Columbia |
Songwriter(s) | Boz Scaggs |
Producer(s) | Joe Wissert |
"We're All Alone" is a song written by Boz Scaggs, which became a hit for Frankie Valli in 1976. The next year it was a top-ten hit for Rita Coolidge in the US and the UK. Scaggs introduced it on his 1976 album Silk Degrees , and included it as the B-side of two of the four single releases from that LP, including "Lido Shuffle".
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 number 11 and number 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 number 54 in the autumn of 1977, the only evident instance of the Scaggs original charting.
Chart (1977) | Peak position |
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Australia (Kent Music Report) [1] | 54 |
Personnel
"We're All Alone" | ||||
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Single by Frankie Valli | ||||
from the album Valli | ||||
B-side | "You to Me Are Everything" | |||
Released | August 1976 | |||
Genre | Disco | |||
Length | 3:59 | |||
Label | Private Stock | |||
Songwriter(s) | Boz Scaggs | |||
Producer(s) | Bob Gaudio | |||
Frankie Valli singles chronology | ||||
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Frankie Valli had a single version from his Valli LP which reached number 78 U.S. in August 1976 (number 74 Cash Box, number 27 Adult Contemporary; Canada number 73 Pop, number 36 AC). [2]
Record World said that "Valli's interpretation is warm and sincere." [3]
Chart (1976) | Peak position |
---|---|
Canada Adult Contemporary ( RPM ) [4] | 36 |
Canada Top Singles ( RPM ) [5] | 73 |
US Billboard Hot 100 [6] | 78 |
US Adult Contemporary ( Billboard ) [7] | 27 |
US Cash Box Top 100 | 74 |
"We're All Alone" | ||||
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Single by Rita Coolidge | ||||
from the album Anytime...Anywhere | ||||
B-side | "Southern Lady" | |||
Released | June 1977 | |||
Length | 3:38 | |||
Label | A&M | |||
Songwriter(s) | Boz Scaggs | |||
Producer(s) | David Anderle | |||
Rita Coolidge singles chronology | ||||
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The Rita Coolidge version of "We're All Alone" was featured on the album Anytime...Anywhere released in March 1977. Her version had the greatest sales success.
Coolidge was already familiar with Scaggs; she sang backing vocals, and she arranged and directed the other backing singers on his albums Moments and Boz Scaggs & Band , both from 1971, on Columbia Records. [8]
Coolidge recalled: "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.'" [9]
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 number 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 number 6 in Ireland. In September Coolidge's version of "We're All Alone" entered the Dutch charts where it would peak at number 15 (in August the Walker Brothers' version had reached number 22 on the Dutch charts).
The second single from Anytime...Anywhere in the US, "We're All Alone" there ascended to number 7 that September: the track also received enough airplay in the C&W market to reach number 68 on the C&W chart.
"We're All Alone" was the first of Coolidge's two Adult Contemporary number 1 hits [10] – 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 number 32 peak – the original Boz Scaggs version had been a minor Australian hit in the autumn of 1977 reaching number 54 in a tandem charting with its flip "Lowdown".
In New Zealand, Coolidge's "We're All Alone" charted with a number 34 peak in February 1978.
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." [11]
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
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The Walker Brothers – one of Scaggs' formative influences [26] – 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 number 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 number 6 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 the US (number 75 C&W) and the UK where the track was the B-side of a remake of "I Second That Emotion". Also in 1977, Jazz pianist Bob James released an instrumental version on his Heads album.
Masayoshi Takanaka, a notable Japanese Jazz Fusion musician, recorded an instrumental version of "We're All Alone" in the 1978 album On Guitar.
William Royce "Boz" Scaggs is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was a bandmate of Steve Miller in The Ardells in the early 1960s and the Steve Miller Band from 1967 to 1968.
"December, 1963 " is a song originally performed by the Four Seasons, written by original Four Seasons keyboard player Bob Gaudio and his future wife Judy Parker, produced by Gaudio, and included on the group's album Who Loves You (1975).
Silk Degrees is the seventh solo album by Boz Scaggs, released on Columbia Records in February 1976. The album peaked at No. 2 and spent 115 weeks on the Billboard 200. It has been certified five times platinum by the RIAA and remains Scaggs's best selling album.
"Can't Take My Eyes Off You" is a 1967 song written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, and first recorded and released as a single by Gaudio's Four Seasons bandmate Frankie Valli. The song was among his biggest hits, earning a gold record and reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a week, making it Valli's biggest solo hit until he hit No. 1 in 1975 with "My Eyes Adored You".
"Our Day Will Come" is a popular song composed by Mort Garson with lyrics by Bob Hilliard. It was recorded by American R&B group Ruby & the Romantics in early December 1962, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"I Don't Want to Talk About It" is a song written by American guitarist Danny Whitten. It was first recorded by American rock band Crazy Horse and issued as the final track on side one of their 1971 eponymous album. It was Whitten's signature tune, but gained more fame via its numerous cover versions, especially that by Rod Stewart. Cash Box magazine has described it as "a magnificent ballad outing."
"My Eyes Adored You" is a 1974 song written by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan. It was originally recorded by The Four Seasons in early 1974. After the Motown label balked at the idea of releasing it, the recording was sold to lead singer Frankie Valli for $4000. After rejections by Capitol and Atlantic Records, Valli succeeded in getting the recording released on Private Stock Records, but the owner/founder of the label, Larry Uttal, wanted only Valli's name on the label. It is from the album Closeup. The single was released in the US in November 1974 and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1975. "My Eyes Adored You" also went to number 2 on the Easy Listening chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 5 song for 1975.
Kenneth "Kenny" Nolan is an American singer-songwriter from Los Angeles.
"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" is an R&B song written by Gary Jackson, Raynard Miner, and Carl Smith. It was recorded by Jackie Wilson for his album Higher and Higher (1967), produced by Carl Davis, and became a Top 10 pop and number one R&B hit.
"All Time High" is a song by American singer-songwriter Rita Coolidge that serves as the theme song to the James Bond film Octopussy (1983). Written by John Barry and Tim Rice and produced by Stephen Short and Phil Ramone, the song was released through A&M Records in 1983.
"C'mon Marianne" is a song composed by L. Russell Brown and Raymond Bloodworth and popularized by The Four Seasons in 1967. Produced by Bob Crewe, the single was the last Four Seasons single to reach the Top Ten of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the 1960s, and their last Top Ten hit until "Who Loves You" in 1975.
Anytime...Anywhere is the sixth album by Rita Coolidge released in 1977 on the A&M Records label. The album is her most successful, reaching #6 on the Billboard 200 and having been certified platinum. The album spawned three Billboard top twenty hits; a cover of Boz Scaggs' "We're All Alone" (#7), a cover of The Temptations' "The Way You Do The Things You Do" (#20), and the album's biggest hit, "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher" (#2), a remake of Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher".
"Lowdown" is a song originally recorded in 1976 by Boz Scaggs from his album Silk Degrees. The song was co-written by Scaggs and keyboardist David Paich. Paich, along with fellow "Lowdown" session musicians bassist David Hungate and drummer Jeff Porcaro, would later go on to form the band Toto.
"Lido Shuffle" is a song written by Boz Scaggs and David Paich and introduced on the 1976 Boz Scaggs album Silk Degrees. It was subsequently released as a single in 1977 and was produced by Joe Wissert.
"Miss Sun" is a 1980 hit for Boz Scaggs first recorded in 1977 by David Paich along with David Hungate, Steve Lukather, and Jeff Porcaro.
"Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye" is a song written by John D. Loudermilk. It was first released in 1962 by Don Cherry, as a country song and again as a doo-wop in 1967 by the group The Casinos on its album of the same name, and was a number 6 pop hit that year. The song has since been covered by Eddy Arnold, whose version was a number 1 country hit in 1968, and by Neal McCoy, whose version became a Top 5 country hit in 1996.
"The Proud One" is a 1966 single written by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe and originally performed by Frankie Valli as part of his debut solo album, The 4 Seasons Present Frankie Valli Solo. Valli's version, which featured the Seasons on instrumental backing but not vocals, peaked at #68 in the U.S. and #64 in Canada. Billboard claimed that "the electric sound of Valli is used to perfection in this powerful ballad, stating that the "easy-go dance beat [is] effective." Cash Box said that it is a "powerhouse" and that "the Valli sound holds the moving, teen-oriented tale of love together and the sweeping arrangement adds a must spin again quality to it."
"You" is a 1977 single by Australian recording artist Marcia Hines, first recorded by writer Tom Snow on his 1975 Taking It All in Stride LP. "You" was the second single from her third studio album, Ladies and Gentlemen, released in October 1977. It peaked at No. 2 in Australia, and remains Hines' highest-charting single in Australia.
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