All by Myself is a jazz standard written by Irving Berlin and published in 1921. It was introduced in The Music Box Revue in 1922, with an early popular recording by Aileen Stanley in 1921 lasting about 3 minutes and 18 seconds; other 1921 versions came from Ted Lewis, Frank Crumit, Vaughn De Leath and Ben Selvin with Ernest Hare. The song’s lyric expresses loneliness and a longing for companionship, a theme that helped it become a lasting part of the American songbook and inspire many notable covers, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. It has appeared in film and animation, notably with Betty Boop in the 1933 Is My Palm Read and in the 1946 movie Blue Skies. The tune is generally categorized as jazz and pop standards and remains a compact, enduring portrait of solitude and longing.
