Songoftheday 6/15/15 - I hear the ticking of the clock, I'm lying here the room's pitch dark...

"Alone" - Heart
from the album Bad Animals (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's SOTD comes from the rock band Heart, whose leading sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson reinvented the band with a new lineup and more mainstream pop sound on their self-titled 1985 album that rewarded them with a #1 comeback that spun off four top-10 pop hits including the #1 ballad "These Dreams". Their next album, Bad Animals, continued the sonic change from Heart, and the first single, "Alone", was a farmed-out mid-tempo rock song written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, who already had #1 hits in the 80s with Madonna's "Like A Virgin" and Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors". The song already had appeared on the Steinberg/Kelly-produced I-Ten album in 1983...

A year later, the song was featured on the show Dreams sung by a post-General Hospital and pre-Full House John Stamos...

Producer Ron Nevison "toughened up" the song a little sonically but was a perfect match for Ann's powerful vocal range...

"Alone" became Heart's second #1 pop hit (and first with Ann singing lead) for three weeks in July of 1987. The single also went to #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, and #2 on its Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list. Internationally, the record was huge around the world, topping the chart in Canada, and going to #3 in the UK (where none of the singles from Heart did on their first try), and top-10 in Australia, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Heart on their Brigade tour in 1990...

American Idol Carrie Underwood cemented her lead on the show with her performance of "Alone" that won over Simon Cowell in 2005...

In 2006, dance music singer Kim Sozzi reached the top-20 on the Dance Singles Sales chart with a sped-up cover of the song...

A year later, Celine Dion released "Alone" as a single, which went to #57 in her native Canada and "Bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #124...

The musical juggarnaut Glee covered "Alone" in its first season with guest star Kristen Chenoweth duetting with Matthew Morrison, and climbed to #51 on the Hot 100 and #47 in the UK in 2009...