Songfacts®:

• After hooking up with with Jess Glynne on "Rather Be," Anne-Marie on "Rockabye" and Zara Larsson on "Symphony", Clean Bandit teamed up with another female vocalist on this EDM track. This time its Demi Lovato, who we hear lamenting about being left alone without a lover.
  
  I wanna f-woop woop woop, but I'm broken hearted
  Cr-cr-cry but I like to party
  T-t-touch but I got nobody
  Here on my own
  
  Clean Bandit's Grace Chatto told OK magazine: "The song's quite empowering. It's about missing your ex but also about finding your own strength and deciding you're going to be on your own."
• The song reflects the heartache that Grace Chatto has been struggling with since splitting from her love interest. Speaking to the London Evening Standard newspaper, she said:
  
  "I've been going through a difficult breakup for a long time and the message is you can't just replace an ex-partner with someone else. You have to be strong in yourself. I've never been through a breakup like this before... I was always the type of person who would go straight into another relationship."
• Lovato resigns herself to spending time alone without her ideal lover amid a mix of synth and vocoder effects. Her vocals were laid down the other side of the Atlantic from where Clean Bandit were. Chatto told the UK Metro newspaper:
  
  "We recorded it over FaceTime. It was crazy. She was in Alabama in a studio and we were over here. You know when the connection is bad and the speed fluctuates? We couldn't hear that well, but it turned out really well."
• The other female voice you hear is that of Camille Purcell, who co-wrote the song. Her other credits include Little Mix's #1 singles "Black Magic" and "Shout Out To My Ex." Purcell explained to the BBC:
  
  "I wanted to write about that feeling where you've broken up with someone and you're not ready to move on but you're really horny. So I think sad sexual barbecue should be the next craze."
• The Bollywood string sound was inspired by Britney Spears' single "Toxic." On the Britney song the producers Bloodshy & Avant originally arrived at the effect by mistake, after recording the violins too slow before speeding them up. Clean Bandit decided to do the same thing on "Solo."
• This was Clean Bandit's 4th UK #1 following "Rather Be," "Rockabye" and "Symphony." For Demi Lovato, it was her very first UK chart-topper. The closest she'd previously got was "Heart Attack," which peaked at #3 in 2013.
• "Solo" was Clean Bandit's seventh straight UK Top 5 single, making them the first act to achieve that feat in over a decade. Girls Aloud managed eight between 2002 and 2005.
• This was the most-Shazamed song of 2018. According to the music identification service, over 9 million people searched for "Solo" during the year on their app. Nicky Jam and J Balvin's "X (EQUIS)" and Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa's "One Kiss" were ranked second and third, respectively.
• The music video follows the aftermath of an argument between Chatto and her lover, played by George Todd McLachlan. We see Clean Bandit's Jack and Luke Patterson cook up a mysterious medicine for her in a basement lab underneath a laundromat. With the help of the medicine, Chatto turns her boyfriend into a rainbow-colored Labrador puppy. Lovato sings to the camera between the shots.
  
  The video officially surpassed one billion views on YouTube in December 2023.