Songfacts®:

• "Alone," released in 2016, was Marshmello's breakout hit, although he was known in EDM circles for his 2015 remixes of Zedd's "Beautiful Now," and Jack Ü's "Where Are U Now." At the time, we didn't know who he was because he wears a full-head-covering marshmallow helmet in the tradition of masked DJs like Daft Punk and Deadmau5. Social media sleuths pegged him as an American DJ named Chris Comstock, who used to perform (unmasked) using the name Dotcom. They were right - a year later it was widely known that Marshmello and Chris Comstock were the same person.
• Marshmello usually collaborates with singers to write the lyrics and provide vocals on his songs, but "Alone" is all him. His vocals are heavily processed, pitched up about three semitones so it sounds like what marshmallow would sound like if it could sing - kind of light and puffy.
• Lyrically, the song is about missing home and the person you love.
  
  I'm so alone
  Nothing feels like home
  I'm so alone
  Trying to find my way back home to you
  
  Marshmello explained the song's meaning on Facebook:
  
  "Truth is, I had just moved away from my friends and family and I started to feel very home sick and lonely like I didn't belong in my new settings. Everything was just happening so fast and I couldn't really grasp where I was or who I was but all I knew was that I felt Alone."
• The music video for "Alone" has amassed over 2.5 billion views. It shows Marshmello as a high school student who gets bullied, but back home keeps grinding away at music. By the end of the video, he's DJing at the school and everyone is wearing Marshmello masks.
• "Alone" was re-released after Marshmello's February 2, 2019 virtual set in the video game Fortnite, this time reaching #29. The Fortnite concert drew over 10 million into the virtual world and started a trend of video game performances that got really popular during the pandemic.
• Marshmello says it took him just a few hours to put the song together. He sent it to his manager, who gave it the thumbs up, and on May 13, 2016, they posted it to Soundcloud. The next day, Marshmello played at the Electric Daisy Carnival in New York and got the attention of the Canadian-based independent EDM label Monstercat, which picked up the song and released it as a digital download on June 17. The video was released on July 2, and the song slowly creeped into the mainstream, charting at #60 in the US in January 2017, establishing Marshmello as a self-contained music maker.
• When "Alone" became a hit, big-name artists hit up Marshmello for collaborations. In 2017 he teamed with Khalid on "Silence" and with Selena Gomez on "Wolves."