2025 Competition Entry:

I Am Alone by Roberta Smith

Genre

Folk

Artist

Co-writer(s)

no

Performer(s)

I sang and played guitar. Aeron Z Jones played other instruments

Description

I wrote it in a songwriting workshop run by Talentistimeless’ Cooper Lower. My husband had just flown to Japan for a week long conference. The task was to concentrate on one small thing. I looked out of the window and I saw the flowers.

Bio

Roberta Smith recorded her first songs as a 16-year-old and she has retained the fresh-voiced youth of those early recordings. A boho singer-songwriter, she writes in an unusual style, the songs often unconventional in format and lyrically unexpected. She plays beautiful fingerstyle guitar and in some ways, her music defies comparison, although the influence of the 70s singer-songwriter movement is unmistakable.
She started to write songs when she was 15 and rose to almost immediate success at 16, winning a major talent competition and performing in the winners’ concert at Leeds Town Hall in front of 4,000 people. She was quickly taken up by Esther Ofarim’s (and later Scott Walker’s) management. At University, she opened for Ralph McTell at Charles Morris Hall, played Leeds University Union and on the university TV network and at many venues in and around Leeds.
After University, marriage and four children, many appearances at many venues and even a spell playing Anne Boleyn in a medieval theatre restaurant, she is still here and still playing, writing and working towards bringing her music to a wider audience. Despite many disappointments and unrealised promises her passion for songwriting has never waned and she is very excited to be recording again and to be back on the London scene.
Roberta has guested on Radio Leeds, provided background music for the BBC World Service, played at Leeds Town Hall, London’s Kashmir Club, the Bedford, the Camden Club, Bunjie’s, the Old Town Hall Hemel Hempstead and at the Court Theatre, Tring. She has also written original music for theatre plays, The Glass Menagerie, Cider with Rosie and The Graduate.
She released a single: « Clock Patience » in 2021 and will be releasing an EP early this year.

Lyrics

I am alone
by Roberta Smith © June 8th 2024

I am alone with the window and the flowers
And I’m wond’ring at what altitude you are.
I am alone and I’m calculating hours
The time is different, you’re so far.

My eyes are open, but the rest of me is dozin’
Cos it’s difficult to sleep in this big bed.
My eyes are open but my brain seems to be frozen
Beside the place you lay your head.

CHORUS
Latitude and longitude; messages in bottles,
Cruising lines of geography since ancient Suns;
Latitude and longitude; messages in bottles
Written to the missing ones.

I am alone with the calendar and counting
And I’m wond’ring if you’re looking at the stars.
I am alone with the forecast and the fountain.
I hear reports of isobars.

I am alone with a compass and a feather
And I’m wond’ring if your vapour trail is calm.
I am alone and I’m asking myself whether
The Gods will keep you safe from harm.
BREAK
Beyond the cloudless sky,
Beyond the reasons why,
Beyond a lullaby.
CHORUS
Latitude and longitude; messages untethered,
Crossing lines of geography like ancient Suns;
Latitude and longitude fail, like engines feathered,
And never reach the missing ones.
BREAK
Beyond the cloudless sky
Beyond the reasons why
Beyond the last goodbye

Leave a comment