Loneliness is a tricky thing, but it reaches its peak when the calendar seems to order everyone to hug and celebrate. Outside the window, everyone is raising their glasses together – and at that moment your personal silence starts to sound deafening. This intonation, familiar to many, was captured by hitmaker Toby Gad and British-Nigerian soul artist JERUB in the new single “Alone Tonight.”
You may not know Toby Gad by face – but his melodies have almost certainly played in your headphones: he had a hand in John Legend’s “All of Me,” Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy,” and Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” JERUB is a young British-Nigerian artist whose voice is increasingly heard on the major stages of the British scene – from BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge to a concert in honor of the King’s coronation.
Listening to “Alone Tonight” is like watching a meeting of two different creative temperatures. Gad builds the song around the piano – his recognizable signature, thanks to which his hits are memorable from the very first notes. Here the instrument sounds restrained, as if someone were playing a melody alone late in the evening, and over this calm framework lies JERUB’s open, slightly cracked, and touching vocal. Closer to the climax, strings enter the arrangement, and the track grows from a chamber sketch to the scale of a cinematic scene: the hero first admits his sadness to himself, and then it engulfs him completely.
This is already Gad and JERUB’s second meeting in the studio – they first crossed paths on the project Toby’s Piano Diaries: The Hits, but back then it was more of a technical exercise. “Alone Tonight,” recorded at Dalston Lane Studios in London, is a different story: here you feel chemistry, not just professional coordination. This, perhaps, is the main value of the single for Gad himself: after decades in the shadows, where hitmakers write the lines and the laurels go to the performers, he is increasingly confidently stepping into the light as an artist in his own right – generously sharing the stage with a new voice like JERUB.
A little over three minutes – yet inside it is a whole emotional narrative: from the quiet recognition of loneliness to symphonic catharsis. “Alone Tonight” is worth listening to both for those who celebrate loudly and for those who stayed home alone – because this feeling is familiar to far more than just them.
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