Scott Walker and the Song of the One-All-Alone

Scott Walker and the Song of the One-all-alone offers a re-evaluation, interpretation, and commentary on the musical oeuvre and lyrics of Scott Walker. Although these days a marginal figure, Walker is, according to Brian Eno and others, a great composer, a superlative lyricist, and a significant contemporary poet. This book offers the first serious academic assessment of the artist. It argues that Walker's work has been informed by a sustained engagement with existentialism from the early days of his career to the present. Furthermore, the book shows that the device of the solitary figure or 'one-all-alone' evoked in his songs has provided in different ways over the years the basis for his lyrical engagement with contemporary culture in a voice that currently affirms the singularity of existence in opposition to the biopolitical quantification of being.