"All by Myself" is a power ballad written and performed by
Eric Carmen in 1975.
The verse borrows very heavily from the second movement (Adagio Sostenuto) of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18, which Carmen believed was in the public domain. Having found it was not,
only after the record had been issued, Carmen had to come to an agreement with the Rachmaninoff estate. Early versions, therefore, only give writing credits to Carmen, but later versions also credit Rachmaninoff. The chorus borrows from
a song "Let's Pretend" that Carmen had written for the Raspberries in 1973. Carmen's full version has an extended piano solo and lasts over seven minutes, although there is also an edited version at 4:22.
The song was the first release from Carmen's first solo LP after leaving the power pop group, the Raspberries, and was originally recorded by the author and released in December, 1975 to great success. It reached number 2 on the
Billboard Hot 100, number 1 on Cash Box Top 100 Singles and number 12 in the UK. The single sold more than one million copies in the United States, and was certified gold by
the RIAA in April 1976. In a 2006 poll for UK's Five programme Britain's Favourite Break-up Songs, Eric Carmen's version of this song was voted seventeenth.
Carmen's original version has spawned numerous cover versions, by such artists as Céline Dion, Frank Sinatra, and Igudesman & Joo. It should not be confused with the jazz
standard of the same name, written by Irving Berlin and performed by Ella Fitzgerald.
On his second solo LP, Boats Against the Current Carmen had a subsequent Top 40 hit
entitled "She Did It," which was the antithesis of "All by Myself." It is a happy answer to the loneliness and lovelessness described in this song and its equally melancholy follow-up,
"Never Gonna Fall in Love Again."
On an episode of the sitcom Living Single, Max plays a guitar and sings an impromptu version of the song to impress a guy working at a restaurant. The Carmen version is also
used in the video introduction for Conan O'Brien's "Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour", when an obese and bearded version of the talk show host struggles to
cope with losing the Tonight Show he hosted for seven months.
All by Myself
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