Sinatra’s concept of No-One Cares was loneliness amid abundance

Evidence

Sinatra’s No-One Cares (which could have been subtitled: From Penthouse to Satis House) was like pop’s take on literary modernism, an affect (rather than a concept) album, a series of takes on a particular theme – disconnection from a hyper-connected world – with Frank the ageing sophisticate adrift in the McLuhan wasteland of the late 50s, Elvis already here, the Beatles on the way (who is the ‘no-one’ who doesn’t care if not the teen audience who have found new objects of adoration?), the telephone and the television offering only new ways to be lonely. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 493

Categorization

• SEED: The phrase ‘telephone and television offering only new ways to be lonely’ could anchor a short essay mapping each communications technology generation’s fresh form of isolation.