When I'm Alone

Album: Catching A Tiger (2010)
Charted: 55
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Songfacts®:

  • In this pop-rock tune from her debut album, Lissie tries to hang on to a lover who's slipping away. Co-written by British songwriters Jim Irvin and Julian Emery, it was inspired by the singer's real-life romance, which was hitting the skids during the making of the album. "It was so painful," she recalled in a 2019 Songfacts interview. "It was like this huge love in my early 20s and I was heartbroken."
  • This established Lissie as a star in Norway, where the single topped the charts. Since then, she's made it a point to visit the country a few times a year.
  • Lissie reimagined this as a piano ballad for her 2019 compilation When I'm Alone: The Piano Retrospective. She shared her thoughts with Songfacts on revisiting the song and the heartache that inspired it: "Now, that immediate feeling of being heartbroken is gone, that person isn't in my thoughts or in my heart anymore, but I can still relate to that feeling or remember that feeling and have this new appreciation for the song. I don't embody the desperation of it quite as much, but I have so much gratitude to that song."
  • This was used in the 2010 crime-thriller 4.3.2.1., starring Emma Roberts. It was also played during the end credits to the 2014 comedy Dumb and Dumber To.
  • Lissie landed a recurring role on season 3 of the TV series Loudermilk, starring Ron Livingston as a former music critic with an acerbic personality. Lissie played Lizzie Poole, a singer-songwriter who gave up her music career after a negative review from Loudermilk. She sang a handful of her songs on the show, including an acoustic rendition of "When I'm Alone," which also lent its name to the season 3 finale in 2020.

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