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“Tired of Being Alone” by Al Green was inspired by an inadvisable decision that Green made while it was snowing outside. The song still has a lot of power.
The best music is often the product of unusual circumstances. For example, “Tired of Being Alone” by Al Green was inspired by an inadvisable decision that Green made while it was snowing outside. All these years later, the song still has a lot of power.
What made Al Green so special
Green gave us classic songs like “Let’s Get Together,” “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” (a duet with Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics), “You Ought to Be with Me,” and “I’m Still in Love with You.” What made his songs so great was the way he performed. It’s hard to listen to one of his tracks without catching some feels from his beautiful voice.
We’ve all felt alone for a little too long at some point, so it’s impossible to listen to Green sing about that sentiment in “Tired of Being Alone” without getting a little teary-eyed. Green was once a reverend, but he has the voice of an angel. Maybe he’ll be leading a choir in heaven one day! He’s still one of the R&B greats al these years later.
How anger and snow inspired Al Green’s ‘Tired of Being Alone’
During a 1991 interview with NPR, Green discussed “Tired of Being Alone.” My girlfriend kept leaving me the key and leaving the apartment, and she would leave me a lot,” he said. “And I was — and I — so I says, well, how — it was snowing one night.
“It was snowing, and I had all the windows open because I was there by myself for hours on end, and I says, well, ‘How can I do something with this? How can I make something out of this?’” he added. “And so I took a pencil and started writing it down ’cause I was angry, and I was writing — ‘I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of on my own.’”
Green gave fans more insight into the song. “I went to getting serious about it — people say that I found a way to make you say that you love me — which is, I don’t have to make you,” he said. “If you really loved me, you’d be here with me. And I was writing on that connotation. You didn’t go for that. It’s a natural fact.”
How ‘Tired of Being Alone’ performed in the United States
“Tired of Being Alone” just missed the top 10, peaking at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, the track spent 19 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Green’s longest-charting song. The track appeared on the provocatively titled Al Green Gets Next to You. That record reached No. 58, which is not very impressive. However, Al Green Gets Next to You spent 43 weeks on the Billboard 200, which is shocking for a record that never broke into the top 40.”
“Tired of Being Alone” garnered critical acclaim decades after its release. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked it No. 299 on their list of the 500 greatest songs ever. The magazine noted that Green penned “Tired of Being Alone” in half an hour. It’s incredible that Green wrote such a classic song in less time than it took to write this article!
“Tired of Being Alone” is a classic song and it wouldn’t exist without Green’s questionable choices during a snowfall.
