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A math guy's random thoughts. |
A math guy's random thoughts. |
Roy Orbison was a truly amazing songwriter and vocalist. His four-octave range made him the "Caruso of pop." Indeed, among twentieth-century male tenors, only Orbison and Caruso were capable of hitting E over high C. After topping the charts with hits like "Only the Lonely" and "Pretty Woman" in the sixties, by the seventies his career had faded. In the eighties, David Lynch featured Orbison's songs in two of his autier masterpieces, which launched renewed interest in the singer's work. In Blue Velvet, Dean Stockwell's rendition "In Dreams" gives it a surreal new meaning, while in Mullholland Drive, Rebecca del Rio renders "Crying" in Spanish (as "Llorando") at the film's critical turning point. Some---myself included--consider the latter to be the one of the most perfect scenes ever committed to film, and the song has much to do with that evaluation. We'll see Roy Orbison again, later in this blog, but I wanted to include "You Got It," since it's one of my personal favorites. I first heard this when it was used near the end of Boys On the Side, where it provides a deeply emotional conclusion to the movie. I only learned much later it was by Orbison. He wrote this song in 1987 during the Christmas season, recording it in a friend's garage with George Harrison providing some of the background music. His only public performance was on November 19, 1988, just seventeen days before his untimely death. This performance was incorporated into the official music video linked below. Following the theme of this blog, this song is one of several mentioned in my Halloween-in-the-time-of-Covid story, "The Selfie" ![]() |