“Somebody's Crying” by Chris Isaak

"Somebody's Crying" opened the campaign for Forever Blue, Chris Isaak's fifth album, when Reprise put it out as the first single in May 1995. It was born of a breakup: Isaak, at a friend's party and wanting to be anywhere else, shut himself in a walk-in closet with a guitar he found propped against the wall and came out with the song.

It's a lonely, twangy thing, Erik Jacobsen's production leaving plenty of room around that tremulous croon. Isaak's lyric aches for an old flame while shrinking from the nerve it would take to reach out again; he likened it to the roundabout way children tell you someone likes you instead of just saying so. It climbed to 45 on the Hot 100 and went top five in Australia and Canada.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.