If You Ever Get Lonely

Album: Rough & Tumble (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this song, Waite sings about losing a girl, but availing himself to her should she ever need an ear (another "call me anytime 'cause I still love you" song: "I'll Be Around" by the Spinners). Waite's love songs are typically tinged with melancholy, and like most romantic relationships, filled with a range of emotions.

    Many of the songs he wrote with his group the Babys and as a solo artist were composed by free association, as he let his heart dictate the lyrics in quick bursts (a great example is "Missing You"). As he ripened, his writing style changed. In our interview with Waite, he explained: "Being older, I don't want to be flying so high. I want to really address what's going on around me and write in a mature way. I look at songwriting now entirely different."
  • This song has a country feel, which you don't get from many British rock singers. Waite thinks that country music allows for a freedom of expression that you can't find in other genres. He told us: "The mid-'80s arena rock has nothing to do with anything. That's just white music. But rock and roll from back when Little Richard was giving it a good singing to, and Elvis, Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, all the early white rock singers, that was part country. Elvis was part country in a big way. You put blues in there with country and you've got rock and roll. That's where rock and roll comes from."
  • The songwriting credits on this one go to Waite, Kyle Cook, Lisa Drew, Michael Dulaney and Steven Dale Jones.

    Cook is a guitarist in Matchbox Twenty who wrote three other tracks on the album with Waite. Dulaney and Jones are songwriters who co-wrote the Tanya Tucker track "Little Things." Lisa Drew's compositions include "There Is No Arizona" by Jamie O'Neal and "I Should Be Sleeping" by Emerson Drive.
  • The country duo Love and Theft recorded this song in 2012 for their second album and made a video to go with the song.
  • According to John Waite, this song is about "getting a phone call at night perhaps the love of your life that you sort of lost track of dials you by mistake or maybe she's out at a party and after a bottle of wine thinks she'll just say hello. It's one of those things where you pick up the phone and you stop breathing. It's about distance. It's about lives going on after they've been damaged." >>
    Suggestion credit:
    DeeTheWriter - Saint Petersburg, Russia Federation

Comments: 1

  • S Torres from TexasThis song is utter perfection.
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