“Get Lonely” is about a much more intense emotion than we usually think of when someone says “lonely.”

Track: “Get Lonely”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is a brutal album. Each narrator, assuming they aren’t all the same person, is experiencing alienation and loneliness. These are people completely cut off from humanity. Many are lamenting a specific relationship, but the reduction of the theme to “a breakup” doesn’t quite cut it for a song like the title track. “Get Lonely” is about something much more extreme.

Sure, the narrator says they will “send your name off from my lips // like a signal flare” but it isn’t just about this person they are no longer with. This is about not connecting with the world at large. They talk about feeling alone in a crowd, which is an oft used comparison but used more literally here. This person actually is out in a crowd and recognizes that they are not like the people around them.

The ending to the second verse pivots towards hope, in a way. The narrator says “and I will come back home // maybe call some friends // maybe paint some pictures // it all depends” and we hear someone trying to dig out of themselves. We hear someone who knows the way out of the darkness, or at least one of the ways. What we don’t hear is a confidence that this will even happen. What makes Get Lonely such a powerful album is the sense that these are real problems a real person is experiencing. This isn’t just the blind rage of a lover scorned and this isn’t angst. This is when internal and external forces combine and cause you to lose your sense of self. This is a bad place and this is a moment where you have to summon up some additional strength to get out of it, spirit willing.