About The Song
“I Don’t Like to Sleep Alone” was released in March 1975, and it served as proof that Paul Anka’s mid-’70s comeback had legs. Within a year he’d gone from a long chart drought to a U.S. No. 1 with “(You’re) Having My Baby,” then another major hit with “One Man Woman/One Woman Man.” This single kept the same approach: plainspoken writing built for adult-pop radio, with Odia Coates featured beside him.
Coates’ presence already carried a story. The widely repeated account of the 1974 sessions says Anka planned to cut “(You’re) Having My Baby” solo until United Artists executive Bob Skaff suggested making it a duet, with Coates—then unknown—stepping in at the microphone. That decision reshaped how Anka’s comeback sounded, and by 1975 the duet wasn’t a novelty; it was part of the package.
The production connected the dots as well. Rick Hall, the founder of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, produced the single, and arranger Jimmie Haskell supplied the smooth, radio-ready framing. Hall’s room had already hosted major soul and pop sessions, and Anka effectively borrowed that understated Muscle Shoals directness for a mainstream adult audience. The result is clean and immediate, with the vocal kept up front and just enough orchestration to place it firmly in 1975’s easy-listening lane.
Anka didn’t dress the lyric up. It’s basically a late-night request stated in everyday words, the kind of sentence you could imagine being said at the door before someone leaves. Some listeners have always found certain lines unusually blunt, but that bluntness is part of why it connected: it sounds like speech, and the melody does the work of turning it into a record. Coates’ lines are lighter than on the 1974 smash, yet they still turn the song from a monologue into a scene.
The single was tied to Anka’s album Feelings, released in May 1975, but the 45 was designed to stand on its own. United Artists backed it with “How Can Anything Be Beautiful—After You,” a B-side pairing that fit the era’s expectation that buyers might actually play both sides.
Its chart story is unusually straightforward. In Canada, it reached No. 1 on both the pop chart and the Adult Contemporary chart and earned a Juno nomination for Single of the Year (losing to Bachman–Turner Overdrive). In the United States, it peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and also No. 8 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart, and it finished at No. 73 on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 list for 1975.
If “(You’re) Having My Baby” was the headline, “I Don’t Like to Sleep Alone” was the confirmation: the Muscle Shoals team fit him, the duet chemistry could repeat, and Anka could sound current in 1975 without chasing trends.
Video
Lyric
I don’t like to sleep alone
Stay with me, don’t go
Talk with me for just a while
So much of you to get to know
Reaching out, touching you
Leaving all the worries all behind
Loving you the way I do
My mouth on yours and yours on mine
Marry me
Well, let me live with you
Nothing’s wrong when love is right
Like a man said in his song
Help me make it through the night
Loneliness can get you down
When you get to thinking no one cares
Lean on me
And I’ll lean on you
Together we will see it through
No, I don’t like to sleep alone
It’s sad to think some folks do
No, I don’t like to sleep alone
No one does
Do you?
I don’t like to sleep alone
No one does
Do you?