The 2010s File Feature
Scared To Be Lonely
Scared To Be Lonely — Martin Garrix and Dua Lipa "Scared To Be Lonely" is a collaborative single between Martin Garrix, the Dutch DJ and producer born Martij…
01 The Story
Scared To Be Lonely — Martin Garrix and Dua Lipa
"Scared To Be Lonely" is a collaborative single between Martin Garrix, the Dutch DJ and producer born Martijn Gerard Garritsen, and Dua Lipa, the British-Albanian singer who would go on to become one of the defining pop artists of the early 2020s. The track was released in January 2017 through STMPD RCRDS, Garrix's own label, in partnership with Island Records. It was written by Dua Lipa, Giorgio Tuinfort, and Martin Garrix, with production by Garrix and Tuinfort. The song arrived at a pivotal moment for both artists: Garrix was already an established name in the electronic dance music world, while Lipa was in the early stages of building the pop profile that would eventually make her a global star.
The track is built on the contrast between a pulsing electronic dance production and lyrical content that examines the emotional mechanics of a failing relationship. The production follows established EDM-pop conventions of the period, with a build-drop structure and synth-heavy arrangement designed for festival and club environments, while Lipa's vocal delivery brings emotional nuance that elevates the material beyond functional dance-floor programming. The combination of these two elements was commercially well-calibrated for the hybrid EDM-pop market that dominated global streaming and radio during this period.
On the Billboard Hot 100, "Scared To Be Lonely" reached a peak of number 67, which, while modest by the standards of some of the other tracks in the broader EDM-pop crossover landscape, was nonetheless a meaningful US chart placement for a record that was primarily positioned as a European dance market release. The song performed significantly better in European markets, charting in the top twenty in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and multiple Scandinavian countries. In the Netherlands specifically, Garrix's home market, the song performed particularly strongly.
The music video, featuring both Garrix and Lipa, depicted a couple navigating the dissolution of their relationship through a series of shared but emotionally disconnected experiences. The visual narrative aligned closely with the lyrical content, emphasizing the gap between physical proximity and emotional connection that the song describes. The video was well-produced and contributed to the song's YouTube view count, which eventually surpassed hundreds of millions of plays as both artists' profiles grew in subsequent years.
The timing of the release was significant for Dua Lipa's career trajectory. Her self-titled debut album was released in June 2017, and "Scared To Be Lonely" served as a high-profile preview of her vocal capabilities and artistic sensibility to a global electronic music audience that might not have been familiar with her prior work. The song expanded her reach into the EDM audience, a demographic that often operates somewhat separately from mainstream pop, and contributed to the international recognition she needed heading into her album launch.
For Garrix, "Scared To Be Lonely" added to a consistent run of successful collaborations with pop vocalists that had defined his commercial strategy since his breakout. Having previously worked with Usher on "Don't Look Down" and building on his own solo successes, Garrix demonstrated with this track that he could attract and work effectively with emerging artists at the moment of their ascent, adding credibility to both parties through the association. His STMPD RCRDS label was being actively established as a creative home during this period, and the song's success helped position it as a viable platform for major collaborative releases.
The track also represented a stylistically interesting moment in EDM-pop crossover history, arriving at a point when the initial commercial explosion of EDM in the early 2010s had begun to mature into more sophisticated hybrids. The production on "Scared To Be Lonely" is more restrained and emotionally considered than the maximalist drops that characterized earlier EDM crossover hits, and this relative sophistication was consistent with broader genre trends toward deeper house influences and more pop-oriented arrangements in 2016 and 2017 electronic music.
In retrospect, "Scared To Be Lonely" is often discussed in the context of Dua Lipa's pre-fame catalog, revisited by fans who discovered it after her subsequent global success with "New Rules," Future Nostalgia, and her broader rise to pop superstardom. The song provides early evidence of the vocal and emotional intelligence that would make her one of the most commercially and critically successful artists of her generation, and its streaming numbers have benefited substantially from the attention her later career has directed back toward her earlier output. Martin Garrix and Lipa have both cited the collaboration warmly in interviews, noting the ease of their creative process and the commercial and artistic success of the result.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind "Scared To Be Lonely" by Martin Garrix and Dua Lipa
"Scared To Be Lonely" engages with one of the most psychologically honest dimensions of romantic relationships: the possibility that two people remain together not because the love between them is still thriving but because the prospect of being alone is more frightening than the reality of a relationship that has run its course. The song does not frame this as a moral failing but as a recognizable and deeply human emotional state, which is a significant part of why it connected with a broad audience despite its relatively complex emotional premise.
The opening of the song establishes the question immediately: are these two people still together because of love or because of fear? Dua Lipa's vocal delivery carries the weight of that question without melodrama, presenting the emotional uncertainty in a tone that is direct and clear rather than tearful or accusatory. This restraint is crucial to the song's emotional effectiveness: the vulnerability is present in the content, not performed in the delivery, which makes it feel more credible and more personally applicable to listeners who recognize the experience.
The production by Martin Garrix creates a sonic environment that mirrors this emotional ambivalence. The track's pulse is urgent and propulsive, suggesting energy and forward momentum, but the synth textures and melodic choices carry a melancholic quality that undercuts any straightforward reading of that energy as positive. You are moving, the production seems to say, but you are not sure where you are going or whether the direction is right. That musical tension between propulsion and uncertainty maps precisely onto the lyrical content of a relationship that has momentum but may have lost its meaning.
The specific fear the song names, the fear of being lonely, is one that society generally regards with some discomfort because it implies that a relationship might be maintained for reasons of comfort rather than genuine connection. The song's willingness to name that fear openly and without judgment creates a space in which listeners who have experienced it can recognize themselves without shame. This is the song's most significant emotional gift: it validates an experience that people often feel they should keep private because it implies something unflattering about their emotional maturity or independence.
There is also a secondary reading of the song as a call to honesty between two people who have been avoiding a difficult conversation. If the fear of loneliness is what is keeping them together, then acknowledging that fact is the first step toward either genuinely recommitting to the relationship or releasing each other to find something more authentically grounded. The song does not prescribe which outcome is correct; it simply insists that the question needs to be asked and that asking it is an act of respect toward both people involved.
For Dua Lipa as a young artist still establishing her public artistic identity, the choice to sing this particular song was itself meaningful. It positioned her as someone interested in emotional complexity and psychological honesty, rather than the more straightforwardly romantic or celebratory content that might have been easier for a debut-era artist to deliver. The emotional intelligence of her performance on "Scared To Be Lonely" was widely noted as an early indicator of the artistic depth she would demonstrate more fully in her subsequent solo work, particularly on songs like "New Rules" and the entirety of Future Nostalgia, which also approached romantic experience from positions of self-awareness and psychological acuity.
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