Together, Alone

Album: Sincerely, E (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • It sometimes feels like our phones are appendages, and if we use them right before bed they could even seep into our dreams. That's what happened to Elizabeth And The Catapult (Elizabeth Ziman): She had a dream where she had phones for hands.

    The dream gave her inspiration for this song, where she sings about - for better or for worse - her phone is a part of her:

    You're never alone even when you are sleeping
    My brain is connected to my hand is connected to my phone
  • "Together, Alone" isn't trying to condemn technology or warn against phone addition, but is more a look at how loneliness has evolved in the digital age. When she appeared on the Songfacts Podcast, Elizabeth Ziman said: "You can be lonely within a relationship, you can be lonely surrounded by people on tour, and you can be lonely being on your phone or being online too much. It's a song about our addiction to our phones, but also the good, the bad, the ugly, the entertaining, the foolish - all this other stuff that comes along with that."
  • The video, directed by Robert Dean, is a day in the life of Elizabeth Ziman's iPhone. As we see her texting, recording, livestreaming and twiddling with various apps, we come to understand how critical the device is to her creative process.
  • Ziman Recorded this song in her New York City apartment with just piano and voice. She considers it "the cornerstone" of her fifth album, Sincerely, E, which she wrote mostly during the summer of 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.

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