Lonely Boy

The Black Keys is a critically acclaimed American rock band that have been nominated for multiple awards including a Grammy. “Lonely Boy” is one of the group’s successful singles and most known tracks.

The track talks about a man who believes he is so far above everyone else, particularly the woman he is seeing, but it doesn’t matter because “I came to love you anyway”, and the girl hurt him but he doesn’t mind “bleeding”, even if the woman keeps him waiting. In the chorus he emphasizes that he’s a “lonely boy”, which is the namesake of the song. In the second verse, he mentions how the woman’s dad left her, and he should have done the same. The song is short but has an icredible punky rock percussion and drum undertone.

The music video has an interesting history. It originally had a script and a cast of more than 40 people, but the band were not pleased with the results. Dan Auerbach said in an interview: “A couple of weeks after we shot it they sent us the edit and it was awful. We sent it back… they sent us another edit and it was terrible. That’s when we said ‘what about that one guy, the extra who had that one dance scene’ and that’s the video – the most expensive single shot ever recorded.” The video consists of a middle aged man dancing in front of a red door with an “OFFICE” sign singing along to the track. The video has almost 90 million views and over 567,000 likes on YouTube.

Release Date: 26th October 2011

Songwriter/s: Dan Auerbach, Patrick Carney, Danger Mouse

Album: El Camino (2011)

Label: Nonesuch Records

Music Video Release Date: 26th October 2018

Chart Rankings & Certifications: It went Gold in Denmark, Platinum in New Zealand, Platinum three times in Australia, and Platinum nine times in Canada. It won a Grammy Award for “Best Rock Performance” and “Best Rock Song” at the 55th Grammy Awards.