Eric Carmen died at the age of 74: pathos, depth, pain – culture

Eric Carmen, the American singer who owed his worldwide fame to his song “All By Myself”, is dead. He was by no means a one-hit wonder, more of a monster hit wonder. The song, which landed in the top ten worldwide in 1975, is a prime example of the pathos that pop developed at the time. The song builds through delicate piano chords and a deeply sad verse with surges of strings and somewhat overly muscular drum fills to the drama of the chorus, where every word makes you instinctively want to throw your head left and right in heartbreak. There is then an elaborate piano passage until the refrain booms out again: All! By! Myself. It’s all so thick, but at the same time so irresistible that Hollywood resorted to it again and again in the heyday of irony to underline the desperation of heartbreak in an ironic, yet believable way. The song appeared in “Clueless”, “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and in the cuddly series “Friends”.