The Loneliest Guy

"The Loneliest Guy"
Song by David Bowie from the album Reality
Released 2003
Recorded The Looking Glass Studios, New York City
Genre Rock
Length 4:11
Label Iso/Columbia
Writer David Bowie
Producer Tony Visconti, David Bowie
Reality track listing
"Never Get Old"
(3)
"The Loneliest Guy"
(4)
"Looking for Water"
(5)

"The Loneliest Guy" is a song written by David Bowie in 2003 for his album Reality. It's a slow-tempo minimalistic piece in which, according to James E. Perone, "Bowie's character also lives in denial: in spite of the chards of glass that he finds near his windows, the solitary life he lives, and 'all the pages that have turned,' he expresses the belief that he is not 'the loneliest guy' in the world, but, rather, 'the luckiest guy'."[1] The biographer also writes: "The slow, solemn pace of the piece, the long phrases sung with a slowly pulsing vibrato suggest a profound sadness."[1]

The piano is played by Bowie long time pianist Mike Garson in a sombre form that led David Buckley to make an analogy with the "psychotic menage" of Bowie's Outside (1995), although the biographer concludes: "Bowie's vocal, quivering and unstable, is just too much. As music writer Alex Petridis correctly put it, the song was sadly 'overcooked'."[2]

Lou Reed praised the song, writing for Rolling Stone: "He's always changing, so you never get tired of what he's doing. And I mean all the way up to his later records: 'The Loneliest Guy' on his album Reality is a great song. Yet another one."[3] Margaret Cho also wrote in her compilation of essays and prose I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (2005) that she likes many Bowie songs, "and the new songs from the Reality album, a new favorite being 'The Loneliest Guy.' It's almost too much to ask for, the ageless, timeless, faultless, flawless Bowie in a vocal storm of versatility [...]"[4]

Live versions

References

  1. ^ a b James E. Perone, The words and music of David Bowie, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, p.139. ISBN 0275992454
  2. ^ David Buckley, Strange fascination: David Bowie, the definitive story, Virgin Books, 2005, p.499. ISBN 0753510022
  3. ^ Lou Reed. "100 Greatest Artits: David Bowie". Rolling Stone. Consulted on October 10, 2011.
  4. ^ Margaret Cho. I have chosen to stay and fight. Riverhead Books, 2005, p.198. ISBN 1573223190

External links