Tired of Being Alone

Tired of Being Alone became Al Green’s first breakthrough hit – his first to crack the Top 40 in America. The song was written by Al Green and was produced and recorded by Willie Mitchell at Hi Records and mixed by Mitchell and Terry Manning. It reached number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 7 on the Soul Singles Chart in 1971. Billboard ranked it as the number 12 song for 1971.

According to Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Singles, this came to Green when he woke up before dawn the day after a show in Detroit at a motel in rural Michigan with a song forming in his mind. Half an hour later, he had it written, but his producer Willie Mitchell wasn’t much interested in Green performing his own material. Green said, “I was toting my song around in my pocket for days on end, saying, ‘Hey, I got a song.’ Finally, at the end of the session, I said, ‘Well, I still got a song.'”

In 2004, Al Green’s version was ranked number 293 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.