“Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” was written by John Prine and first recorded by him for German Afternoons (Oh Boy Records, 1986), his ninth album and his second on the label he had founded with Al Bunetta and Dan Einstein in 1981. Prine told an interviewer that the song came out all at once, from a broken relationship he could not understand and had to explain to himself; his marriage to the musician Rachel Peer was ending, and the album’s producer Jim Rooney later recalled the song as the best to come out of that turmoil.
The lyric is addressed to a partner who comes home late, comes home early, or does not come home at all. The singer, whose heart burns with fever and whose mind is worried and jealous, asks what has come over her and how a love that was meant to last forever could be left so far behind.
Kim Carnes recorded it for her 1988 MCA album View from the House, and her single reached number 70 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Nanci Griffith included it, with Prine singing harmony, on Other Voices, Other Rooms (Elektra, March 2, 1993), an album made up entirely of songs by writers who had influenced her; the album won the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
