I was crying when this song started.
Not in a poetic sense. Actually crying. Sitting in the dark, tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix, and I said out loud, “I’m lonely. I’m fed up of being alone. I’m fed up of having to hold everything myself.” That sentence didn’t feel dramatic. It felt factual.
It was a time where I felt cut off from everyone, including myself. Not just isolated… more like sealed away. I could see life happening. People laughing, connecting, moving forward. I just couldn’t reach it. Like there was glass between me and everything else. That’s where Solo came from.
Lyrically
I wrote it with Clare Yarwood-White. I remember saying I didn’t know how to write about this without it sounding like self-pity or melodrama. The feeling was heavy, but also strangely quiet. So we started small. One image at a time. Someone going through the motions. Showing up. Trying. Saying the right things. Doing “the work.” And still feeling completely alone inside their own life.
It’s not a dramatic loneliness. There’s no big event. No obvious loss. It’s the kind that sits in the background while everything looks “fine”. The line about living life behind glass became the anchor. That sense of being visible, but unreachable.
Sonically
The song begins almost bare. Just voice and piano. Close, exposed, a bit fragile. Then the drums come in sharp and urgent. Not smooth. More like knocking. Like someone trying to get someone’s attention through a barrier.
It builds to something almost theatrical, then drops away again. That rise and fall felt right. That’s what it was like internally. Peaks of emotion, then going quiet because there’s nowhere for it to go.
There’s also the double meaning in the title. Solo. So low. That landed later, but it fits.
Visually
The lyric video uses stage haze. The soft, suspended kind you see before the lights come up in a theatre. It felt right. Not solid. Not clear. Just something in the air.
That’s how that period felt. Present, but hard to grasp. Painful, but not in a way you can easily explain to someone else.
What it means now
This is one of the most vulnerable songs I’ve written. Not because it says something shocking. Because it says something small and true. I didn’t write it to impress anyone. I wrote it because I didn’t know where else to put the feeling.
It’s not for everyone. But if you’ve ever felt like you’re here, functioning, doing what you’re supposed to do… and still quietly struggling, I hope it meets you gently.
Not with answers. Just with recognition.