Alone Again Or

MacLean wrote it in 1965, under the title Alone Again, with the debut album in mind. He did not finish it until the Forever Changes sessions in the summer of 1967. Lee added the Or. It was recorded on 10 September 1967 at Sunset Sound, with David Angel adding strings and horns. MacLean said that arrangement was the happiest he had ever been with anything the band did.

Echols said the song began with a banjo intro, until he and MacLean found they could not play the instrument. While he was noodling Spanish chords in a corner, he, MacLean and Angel reworked the song around flamenco runs and a mariachi-style trumpet part. Lee sang along with MacLean, and his voice was mixed louder than MacLean's, so that it became the main melody. MacLean later said he was not that great a singer at that point and understood the change.

An edited single went to number 123 on the Billboard chart in early 1968 and to number 7 on the Los Angeles station KHJ and the San Diego station KGB. The longer album version spent three weeks on the chart in 1970, peaking at number 99. Its 1968 B-side was A House Is Not a Motel. Rolling Stone ranked it 436 on its 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs and 442 in 2010. Slant's Sal Cinquemani called it a near-perfect pop song and praised Angel's arrangement.

The Damned released a cover on 6 April 1987, which reached number 27 in the United Kingdom. MacLean's own demos appeared in 1997 on Ifyoubelievein. The song has been used in the films Bottle Rocket and Sleepers, both from 1996, and in the finale of the first season of Russian Doll.