John Alone

John Alone is a London-based R&B recording artist, musician, and vocalist whose large and highly sonically diverse discography of music has made waves in the R&B scene over the last few years. Although he has only recently started making big waves in his industry, John Alone, formerly known as Wiley Coyote, has released music since 2016.

The artist's debut R&B project, an album titled Spanish Blue, was released in 2020. Featuring a diverse collection of 9 songs, no two tracks on Spanish Blue are alike, showing off the artist's sonic versatility. According to John Alone, the album is about the crossroads between the themes of addiction and the themes of a relationship; more specifically, it is about how a relationship with a person can often model the relationship one has with their substance addiction.

In his own words, Spanish Blue is one of the most honest bodies of work that the artist has worked on, saying that his own experiences mostly inspire the songs in personal relationships, both the good and the bad. Notably, the entire album was recorded in John Alone's bedroom studio, where he also audio engineered the album and produced two of the songs.

However, this intimate side of John Alone is not the only side he has presented to his audiences through his releases. The 2021 release African English, for example, has a more upbeat Afrobeat sound, and although the lyrics and about love, desire, and relationships, the soundscape he filters them through is more energetic than his previous releases.

Ready Now?, a single from African English, is a clear testament to the artist's tendency to subtly mix various styles into his more natural R&B sound. The track builds up with a synth soundscape over afrobeat drums, featuring Alone's trademark deep, sexy, and playful voice. Meanwhile, the musician's lyricism in the track is a healthy mix of extremely profound and well-worded lines and simple earworms like the song's hook.

From what we can see of John Alone's EP releases so far, his lyrical interests lie in relationships, as well as themes of love, desire, attachment, commitment, and infatuation. However, his takes on these themes are anything but generic and seem to come from a very personal space. In fact, John Alone's ability to translate his personal experiences into relatable and profound yet catchy lyrics can be better seen in his song Ego.

Ego is a product of Alone's experiences navigating fame in the pedestal culture of London. He talks about how artists are often pitted against one another and how he needs to remain self-aware of his roots and passion despite the toxically competitive artist culture surrounding him in London. The song mixes an Afro-Caribbean sound with the grit and ruthlessness of hip hop and features a rather brooding and introspective manner of rapping by the artist himself.

In the end, John Alone is an artist who cares deeply about remaining true to himself, whether that means he will continue exploring ideas of love and desire in different forms or whether he will eventually move on to other lyrical themes is yet to be seen.