Editing Roy Orbison (section)

==Style and legacy==
{{Quote box
 | width = 30%
 | quote = "[Roy Orbison] was the true master of the romantic apocalypse you dreaded and knew was coming after the first night you whispered 'I Love You' to your first girlfriend. You were going down. Roy was the coolest uncool loser you'd ever seen. With his Coke-bottle black glasses, his three-octave range, he seemed to take joy sticking his knife deep into the hot belly of your teenage insecurities."
| source = —[[Bruce Springsteen]], 2012 [[South by Southwest|SXSW]] Keynote Address<ref>{{cite web |last=Tuttle |first=Mike |date=March 19, 2012 |url=http://www.webpronews.com/springsteen-sxsw-keynot-2012-03 |title=Bruce Springsteen Schools 'Em At SXSW 2012 |website=WebProNews |access-date=March 22, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120322042314/http://www.webpronews.com/springsteen-sxsw-keynot-2012-03 |archive-date=2012-03-22}}</ref>
}}

Rock and roll in the 1950s was defined by a driving [[Beat (music)#Backbeat|backbeat]], heavy guitars, and lyrical themes that glorified youthful rebellion.<ref>Lehman, p. 8.</ref> Few of Orbison's recordings have these characteristics. The structure and themes of his songs defied convention, and his much-praised voice and performance style were unlike any other in rock and roll.{{according to whom|date=July 2021}} Many of his contemporaries compared his music with that of classically trained musicians, although he never mentioned any classical music influences. Peter Lehman summarized it, writing, "He achieved what he did not by copying classical music, but by creating a unique form of popular music that drew upon a wide variety of music popular during his youth."<ref>Lehman, p. 58.</ref> Orbison was known as "the [[Enrico Caruso|Caruso]] [[Honorific nicknames in popular music#O|of Rock]]"<ref name="Amburn"/>{{refpage|p97}}<ref name="rollingstone.com">{{cite magazine|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/hear-roy-orbison-croon-oh-pretty-woman-with-the-royal-philharmonic-125895/|title=Hear Roy Orbison Croon 'Oh, Pretty Woman' With the Royal Philharmonic|first1=Stephen L.|last1=Betts|magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |date=October 5, 2017}}</ref> and "the Big O".<ref name="rollingstone.com"/>

Roy's Boys LLC, a Nashville-based company founded by Orbison's sons to administer their father's catalog and safeguard his legacy, announced a November 16, 2018, release of ''Unchained Melodies: Roy Orbison with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra'' album, as well as an autumn 2018 Roy Orbison hologram tour called ''In Dreams: Roy Orbison in Concert''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.musicnewsnet.com/2018/10/roy-orbison-with-royal-philharmonic-unchained-melodies-releases-1116-includes-duet-with-country-musi.html|title=Roy Orbison with Royal Philharmonic "Unchained Melodies" Releases 11/16, Includes Duet With Country Music Sensation Cam|website=Music News Net}}</ref>{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}

===Song structures===
Music critic [[Dave Marsh]] wrote that Orbison's compositions "define a world unto themselves more completely than any other body of work in pop music".<ref>Lehman, p. 20.</ref> Orbison's music, like the man himself, has been described as timeless, diverting from contemporary rock and roll and bordering on the eccentric, within a hair's breadth of being weird.<ref>Lehman, p. 9.</ref> Peter Watrous, writing for the ''New York Times'', declared in a concert review, "He has perfected an odd vision of popular music, one in which eccentricity and imagination beat back all the pressures toward conformity".<ref name="watrous">Watrous, Peter (July 31, 1988). "Roy Orbison Mines Some Old Gold". ''The New York Times''. p. 48.</ref>

In the 1960s, Orbison refused to splice edits of songs together and insisted on recording them in single takes with all the instruments and singers together.<ref>Lehman, p. 46.</ref> The only convention Orbison followed in his most popular songs is the time limit for radio fare in pop songs. Otherwise, each seems to follow a separate structure. Using the standard [[32-bar form]] for verses and choruses, normal pop songs followed the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus structure. Where A represents the verse, B represents the chorus, and C the bridge, most pop songs can be represented by A-B-A-B-C-A-B, like "Ooby Dooby" and "Claudette". Orbison's "In Dreams" was a song in seven movements that can be represented as Intro-A-B-C-D-E-F; no sections are repeated. In "Running Scared", however, the entire song repeats to build suspense to a final climax, to be represented as A-A-A-A-B. "Crying" is more complex, changing parts toward the end to be represented as A-B-C-D-E-F-A-B'-C'-D'-E'-F'.<ref>Lehman, p. 53.</ref> Although Orbison recorded and wrote standard structure songs before "Only the Lonely", he claimed never to have learned how to write them:<ref name="nswhof">{{cite web |url=http://www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/l-o/roy-orbison.aspx |title=Roy Orbison |publisher=Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame |year=2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090102144848/http://www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/l-o/roy-orbison.aspx |archive-date=January 2, 2009 |access-date=May 30, 2009}}</ref>

{{blockquote|I'm sure we had to study composition or something like that at school, and they'd say, 'This is the way you do it,' and that's the way I would have done it, so being blessed again with not knowing what was wrong or what was right, I went on my own way.&nbsp;... So, the structure sometimes has the chorus at the end of the song, and sometimes there is no chorus, it just goes&nbsp;... But that's always after the fact—as I'm writing, it all sounds natural and in sequence to me. | Roy Orbison}}

[[Elton John]]'s songwriting partner and main lyricist [[Bernie Taupin]] wrote that Orbison's songs always made "radical left turns", and k.d. lang declared that good songwriting comes from being constantly surprised, such as how the entirety of "Running Scared" eventually depends on the final note, one word.<ref>Lehman, p. 52.</ref> Some of the musicians who worked with Orbison were confounded by what he asked them to do. Nashville session guitarist [[Jerry Kennedy]] stated, "Roy went against the grain. The first time you'd hear something, it wouldn't sound right. But after a few playbacks, it would start to grow on you."<ref name="Amburn"/>{{refpage|p128}}

===Lyrical themes===
Critic Dave Marsh categorizes Orbison's ballads into themes reflecting pain and loss, and dreaming. A third category is his up-tempo rockabilly songs such as "Go! Go! Go!" and "Mean Woman Blues" that are more thematically simple, addressing his feelings and intentions in a masculine [[braggadocio (rap)|braggadocio]].{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} In concert, Orbison placed the up-tempo songs between the ballads to keep from being too consistently dark or grim.<ref>Lehman, pp. 70–71.</ref>

In 1990, Colin Escott wrote an introduction to Orbison's biography published in a CD box set: "Orbison was the master of compression. Working the singles era, he could relate a short story, or establish a mood in under three minutes. If you think that's easy—try it. His greatest recordings were quite simply perfect; not a word or note surplus to intention."<ref name="escott"/> After attending a show in 1988, Peter Watrous of ''The New York Times'' wrote that Orbison's songs are "dreamlike claustrophobically intimate set pieces".<ref name="watrous"/> Music critic Ken Emerson writes that the "apocalyptic romanticism" in Orbison's music was well-crafted for the films in which his songs appeared in the 1980s because the music was "so over-the-top that dreams become delusions, and self-pity paranoia", striking "a post-modern nerve".<ref>DeCurtis and Henke, p. 157.</ref> [[Led Zeppelin]] singer [[Robert Plant]] favored American R&B music as a youth, but beyond the black musicians, he named Elvis and Orbison especially as foreshadowing the emotions he would experience: "The poignancy of the combination of lyric and voice was stunning. [Orbison] used drama to great effect and he wrote dramatically."<ref name="hall"/>

The loneliness in Orbison's songs for which he became most famous, he both explained and downplayed: "I don't think I've been any more lonely than anyone else&nbsp;... Although if you grow up in West Texas, there are a lot of ways to be lonely."<ref name="hall"/> His music offered an alternative to the postured masculinity that was pervasive in music and culture. [[Robin Gibb]] of the [[Bee Gees]] stated, "He made emotion fashionable, that it was all right to talk about and sing about very emotional things. For men to sing about very emotional things&nbsp;... Before that no one would do it."<ref name="hall"/> Orbison acknowledged this in looking back on the era in which he became popular: "When ["Crying"] came out I don't think anyone had accepted the fact that a man should cry when he wants to cry."<ref name="hall"/>

===Voice quality===
{{Quote box
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 | quote = What separates Orbison from so many other multi-octave-spanning power singers is that he can hit the biggest notes imaginable and still sound ''unspeakably sad'' at the same time. All his vocal gymnastics were just a means to a powerful end, not a mission unto themselves. Roy Orbison didn't just sing beautifully—he sang brokenheartedly.
| source = —[[Stephen Thompson (journalist)|Stephen Thompson]], [[NPR]]<ref name="NPRsongswelove">{{cite web |url=https://www.npr.org/2011/04/28/135734524/roy-orbison-songs-we-love |title=Roy Orbison: Songs We Love |author=NPR staff |website=NPR |date=April 27, 2011 |access-date=April 29, 2011}}</ref>
}}

Orbison admitted that he did not think his voice was put to appropriate use until "Only the Lonely" in 1960, when it was able, in his words, to allow its "flowering".<ref>Lehman, p. 50.</ref> Carl Perkins, however, toured with Orbison while they were both signed with Sun Records and recalled a specific concert when Orbison covered the [[Nelson Eddy]] and [[Jeanette MacDonald]] standard "[[Indian Love Call]]", and had the audience completely silenced, in awe.<ref>Lehman, p. 49.</ref> When compared to the Everly Brothers, who often used the same session musicians, Orbison is credited with "a passionate intensity" that, according to ''The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll'', made "his love, his life, and, indeed, the whole world [seem] to be coming to an end—not with a whimper, but an agonized, beautiful bang".<ref name=decurtis155/>

Bruce Springsteen and [[Billy Joel]] both commented on the otherworldly quality of Orbison's voice. [[Dwight Yoakam]] stated that Orbison's voice sounded like "the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window".<ref>Lehman, p. 22.</ref> Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees went further to say that when he heard "Crying" for the first time, "That was it. To me that was the voice of God."<ref name="hall">Hall, Mark. (director) ''In Dreams: The Roy Orbison Story'', Nashmount Productions Inc., 1999.</ref> Elvis Presley stated Orbison's voice was the greatest and most distinctive he <!--check who 'they' are---> had ever heard.<ref name="Amburn"/>{{refpage|p175,193}} Orbison's music and voice have been compared to opera by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and songwriter [[Will Jennings]], among others.{{sfn|Lehman|ref=none|p=21}} Dylan marked Orbison as a specific influence, remarking that nothing like him was on radio in the early 1960s:<ref>Dylan, p. 33.</ref>{{Which|reason=Which source is this referring to?|date=October 2019}}

{{blockquote|With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop. [After "Ooby Dooby"] he was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal&nbsp;... His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttering to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it". | Bob Dylan}}

Likewise, Tim Goodwin, who conducted the orchestra that backed Orbison in Bulgaria, had been told that Orbison's voice would be a singular experience to hear. When Orbison started with "Crying" and hit the high notes, Goodwin stated: "The strings were playing and the band had built up and, sure enough, the hair on the back of my neck just all started standing up. It was an incredible physical sensation."<ref name="Amburn"/>{{refpage|p184}} Bassist [[Jerry Scheff]], who backed Orbison in his [[Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night|A Black and White Night]] concert, wrote about him, "Roy Orbison was like an opera singer. His voice melted out of his mouth into the stratosphere and back. He never seemed like he was trying to sing, he just did it."<ref>Scheff, Jerry (2012). ''Way Down: Playing Bass with Elvis, Dylan, the Doors & More.'' Backbeat Books. p. 33.</ref>

His voice ranged from [[baritone]] to [[tenor]], and music scholars have suggested that he had a three- or four-octave range.<ref>{{cite web |last=O'Grady |first=Terence J. |date=February 2000 |url=http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-02294.html |title=Orbison, Roy |website=American National Biography |url-access=subscription |access-date=May 20, 2009}}</ref>

Orbison's severe stage fright was particularly noticeable in the 1970s and early 1980s. During the first few songs in a concert, the [[vibrato]] in his voice was almost uncontrollable, but afterward, it became stronger and more dependable.<ref name="Lehman, p. 24">Lehman, p. 24.</ref> This also happened with age. Orbison noticed that he was unable to control the tremor in the late afternoon and evenings, and chose to record in the mornings when control was possible.<ref>{{Citation|last=Townsend|first=Paul|title=Roy Orbison, March 1967, Colston Hall, Bristol|date=January 2, 2014|url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/11707869923/|access-date=October 24, 2019}}</ref>

===Live performances===
[[File:Roy Orbison.jpg|thumb|250 px|Orbison, center (in white), performing in 1976]]
Orbison often excused his motionless performances by saying that his songs did not allow instrumental sections so he could move or dance on stage, although songs like "Mean Woman Blues" did offer that.<ref>Lehman, p. 62.</ref> He was aware of his unique performance style, even in the early 1960s, when he commented, "I'm not a super personality—on stage or off. I mean, you could put workers like [[Chubby Checker]] or [[Bobby Rydell]] in second-rate shows and they'd still shine through, but not me. I'd have to be prepared. People come to hear my music, my songs. That's what I have to give them."<ref>Clayson, Alan, p. 78.</ref>

k.d. lang compared Orbison to a tree, with passive but solid beauty.<ref>{{cite web |author=Lang, k. d. |date=April 15, 2004 |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939233/the_immortals__the_greatest_artists_of_all_time_37_roy_orbison |title=The Immortals – The Greatest Artists of All Time: 37) Roy Orbison |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=June 2, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090506004850/https://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939233/the_immortals__the_greatest_artists_of_all_time_37_roy_orbison |archive-date=May 6, 2009}}</ref> This image of Orbison as immovable was so associated with him it was parodied by [[John Belushi]] on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', as Belushi dressed as Orbison falls over while singing "Oh, Pretty Woman", and continues to play as his bandmates set him upright again.<ref name="Lehman, p. 24"/> However, lang quantified this style by saying, "It's so hard to explain what Roy's energy was like because he would fill a room with his energy and presence, but not say a word. Being that he was so grounded and so strong and so gentle and quiet. He was just there."<ref name="hall"/>

Orbison attributed his own passion during his performances to the period when he grew up in Fort Worth while the US was mobilizing for World War II. His parents worked in a defense plant; his father brought out a guitar in the evenings playing the driving rhythm of western swing, and their friends and relatives who had just joined the military gathered to drink and sing heartily with him. Orbison later reflected, "I guess that level of intensity made a big impression on me, because it's still there. That sense of 'do it for all it's worth and do it now and do it good.' Not to analyze it too much, but I think the verve and gusto that everybody felt and portrayed around me has stayed with me all this time."<ref name="Amburn"/>{{refpage|p7}}