It is a specific type of heartbreak to realize you see yourself too well in a song and Tom Minor and his song, The Loneliest Person on Earth, serves up the painful truth with ruthless accuracy. It is not another break up song; it is a crime scene investigation of how two people can be in the same room yet so alone, in the same place but in another world.
The most interesting thing about this track is the conversational manner of the vocals, performed by Minor, it sounds more like confession than performance. His question-and-answer pattern makes the connection intimate and makes you feel like you are eavesdropping on a personal realization. It is full of wit and sarcasm but there is something more open behind it, the realization that our wounds are often our sharpest observations about love.
Musically, the song is ideal in rounding off between the indie rock appeal and folk purity. The song stays with you, long after it is over, with the beautifully crafted instrumentation giving the song a classy background, without obscuring the rawness of the lyrics. The soundscape that producer Teaboy Palmer has created is relaxed but cleansing, akin to letting Minor breathe and still keeping his words flowing with emotional movement.
The ability to exist on a higher level than a relationship autopsy is found in the knowledge of the urban loneliness and the specific isolation that modern romantic entanglement poses as seen in the case of the loneliest person on earth. Minor captures that sense of being trapped in domestic drama where nothing and everything at once seems to matter and at the same time mean absolutely nothing.
This London singer songwriter has written something that is at the same time intensely personal and yet at the same time universal a song of the paradox of common solitude that will speak to anyone who has ever felt lonely in a crowd. It is a must listen to both the romantically scarred and the emotionally truthful.
