- Crying Roy Orbison 2:47
What a great, and unique song this is. The drummer is featured just as importantly as the singer himself, Roy “The Boy” Orbison. As a matter of fact by the end of the song all sorts of musicians are adding their talents to the ever growing “wall of sound” that is emerging.
At the start one hears only a simple tom-tom, guitar and low violins and soft background vocals…Orbison is telling the story and setting things up. The second verse grows more…violins more prounced. Then about 40 seconds from the end everything goes full bore…Orbison’s soaring high voice, the heavy, steady, pounding of the drum and the violins bowing so hard it seems they are trying to saw their instruments in two.
Below is a review by music reviewer George Starostin that he wrote in November 2024 about the song “Crying” He is MUCH better writer than I and I wanted to share his views. I did slightly edit his piece.
‘Crying’ is probably the greatest song Roy ever wrote and performed, just because it feels like such an ideal photoshoot of his complex artistic personality.
It’s great right from the start: there’s the frozen-in-ice melancholic-emotionless state of mind (“I was all right for a while / I could smile for a while…“) immediately triggered and shattered by the protagonist’s fateful re-encounter (“But I saw you last night / You held my hand so tight…“) — Roy not only rises higher in pitch here, but gulps down a pint of extra gentleness so we know the emotionless frown is just a front. Then there are the several different ways in which he articulates the word “crying“, almost as if mulling it over, seeking out all the different ways in which a grown man can shed tears. There are enough subtle overtones here to make up for a good dissertation in the field of emotional psychology.
And then there’s the grand finale. ‘Crying’ starts out as a tragedy and ends up as a tragedy, yet its coda ends on a note of emotional triumph because the protagonist wants to cry…I mean here is the greatest love on earth broken and shattered in the greatest way possible, with a heart destroyed beyond repair once and for all, putting to shame even the most desperate and suicidal romantics of the 19th century. How’s that for a triumph?
George Starostin
https://onlysolitaire.substack.com/p/review-roy-orbison-crying-1962