Editing Roy Orbison (section)

===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}}