A #1 Adult Contemporary hit for 5 weeks, Souther told us that Roy Orbison, who had a hit with "Only The Lonely," was a big influence on this song. Said Souther: "I was a little kid when I first heard Roy Orbison, but he was magic. He's the guy that you turned out the lights and listened to his records by yourself - or with a girl - because he was just completely other-worldly. He had sarcastic and adventurous songs and great arrangements, and then that beautiful, almost operatic voice. Beautiful, natural deep echo on it. He is one of half a dozen or so rockabilly musicians that I really loved. When I was in junior high school was the first time I really started listening to that.

But then I started playing drums all the time, and I got so fascinated with jazz, I didn't really think much about singing or making rock and roll records for quite a few years. The first song I ever heard called 'Only the Lonely' was this song that Frank Sinatra sang. It's a Johnny Mercer song; it's on a Sinatra album called Songs for Only the Lonely. There are a lot of songs with that name. But the beat that I used for 'You're Only Lonely' is that rockabilly beat. That sort of break in it was taken from another Roy Orbison record called 'I'm Hurtin'' that I really love.

"You're Only Lonely" is a 1979 single by J. D. Souther from his album of the same name. The single peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, Souther's only top ten pop hit, and spent five weeks at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart.

Guitar: Danny Kortchmar
Saxophone: David Sanborn
Background singers: Phil Everly
Jackson Browne
Glen Frey
Don Felder
Don Henley

NOT TOO SHABBY FOR BACKGROUND SINGERS.....LOL