Roy Orbison's "Bye Bye Love"

I actually listened to Roy Orbison's "Bye Bye Love" a few days ago, but I got thinking about it again this morning.  I'd forgotten that his melody is slightly different compared to the Everly Brothers' version (which is the well-known version).  Orbison's version is from 1960, and the Everly Brothers' is from 1957, so theirs pre-dates Orbison's, but I think the way Orbison changed the melody improves the song.

In the Everly Brothers' version, "Bye bye, happiness" and "Hello, loneliness" are sung to the same D, D, C#, B, A phrase, but Orbison has a different melody for each.  He sings "Bye bye, happiness" to that same D, D, C#, B, A phrase, but he sings "Hello, loneliness" to the phrase D, D, C#, A, F#.  Not only does it make the song a bit more interesting (because there's a new phrase, not just the same one repeated), but it also outlines an F# minor chord (F#, A, C#) and since the song is in A major (for which F# minor is the relative minor), that outline emphasizes the sadness described in the lyrics.

Roy Orbison's "California Blue"

I'm currently listening to Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl.  I starting wondering about the writers for "California Blue," so I looked up the publication data.  Unsurprisingly, "California Blue" was co-written by Jeff Lynne (along with Roy Orbison himself and Tom Petty).  Lynne also produced some of the tracks on Mystery Girl (including "California Blue"), and co-produced the Traveling Wilburys album that Orbison was involved with.

His co-writing this song is unsurprising because a lot of Lynne's songs with Electric Light Orchestra have the word blue in them - "Bluebird is Dead" from On the Third Day, "Boy Blue" from Eldorado, "Mr. Blue Sky" from Out of the Blue, "Midnight Blue" from Discovery, and "Bluebird" from Secret Messages.  In the liner notes for Discovery, he says, "I've lost count of the songs I've written with the word blue in the title.  I just love the word blue."

So it's interesting that, knowing Lynne's preference for the word and the working relationship that Orbison and Lynne had, you can tell that Lynne had a hand in writing the song just by that one word.

Roy Orbison's "Running Scared"

I'm listening to an-other Roy Orbison compilation album, titled For the Lonely: 18 Greatest Hits.  Last month, I had wondered whether the rhythm in "Running Scared" is the same as that in Maurice Ravel's Boléro.  As it turns out, the rhythm isn't the same.

However, listening to the song this time, I realized that the structures are fairly similar.  Ravel's Boléro is based almost entirely on a percussion rhythm.  (If I recall correctly, Ravel joked about this, saying that it's a shame that there's no music in the Boléro.)  Orbison's "Running Scared" is also built on a rhythm that's the same throughout the entirety of the song.

But what's more interesting about "Running Scared" is that the rhythm changes instruments.  For the first half a minute, the rhythm is in an acoustic guitar - the only instrument present.  Then, bass and drums (and I think electric guitar) come in, playing the same rhythm.  At about fifty seconds in, violins come in, with the same rhythm.  At about a minute and a half, the rhythm in the drums changes (albeit only slightly), but brass comes in and sustains the original rhythm until the end of the song.

So "Running Scared" is the same as Ravel's Boléro in that it's based entirely on one rhythm, yet unlike Ravel's Boléro, that rhythm is played by more than one instrument.  (Although, to be honest, it's been awhile since I've last listened to Ravel's Boléro, so maybe the rhythm is made obvious in an-other instrumental part in that piece too.)

Roy Orbison's "Sweet and Easy to Love"

Yester-day, I listened to an album of Roy Orbison songs titled The Essential Sun Years.  One of these was stuck in my head last night, and I noticed something when I was playing it over in my head, but I wanted to verify it before I wrote a post about it.

But it does check out, and there's some really interesting duplicity going on in "Sweet and Easy to Love."  If you pay attention to just the lead vocals, it seems like just a regular sort of 1950s love song.  The first line is "Well, it's so sweet and easy to love you."

But if you pay attention to the backing vocals later in the song, you start to realize that the song has more depth than just those platitudes.  After the guitar solo, the backing vocals change from just "ahs" to "sweeter than easy."  "Sweeter than easy" implies that there is some difficulty in loving whoever's the subject of the song.  Everything's not as picture-perfect as it seemed.

If you re-listen to the beginning with that "sweeter than easy" in mind, the lead vocals aren't quite as convincing.  The first few lines are "Well, it's so sweet and easy to love you / Like I do / Yes it's true / I love you."  To me, saying, "Yes it's true" indicates that the speaker/singer is trying a bit too hard to have this pristine loving relationship come across.  And the backing vocals are what call this into question.

Of course, it could just be that "sweet and easy" was a syllable too short for the backing vocals so they added "-er" and substituted "than" for "and," but I think it's more interesting to look at it with the duplicity between the lead vocals and the backing vocals.

Roy Orbison's "Trying to Get to You"

I listened to an-other Roy Orbison compilation album to-day (The Essential Sun Years), which includes "Trying to Get to You."  I wrote a post about this at the beginning of the year in which I remarked upon the similarities between this song and the Beatles' "In Spite of All the Danger."

Listening to it again, I became more convinced of these similarities.  I just looked it up, and the Wikipedia article on the song corroborates this, although it says the Beatles were inspired more by Elvis' version of "Trying to Get to You" than Roy Orbison's version.

Roy Orbison's "Trying to Get to You"

I just listened to Roy Orbison’s “Trying to Get to You,” and in my head, I heard these backing vocals after the verses.  And then I realized that it was the backing vocals from the Beatles’ “In Spite of All the Danger.”

Now, I’ve not listened to “In Spite of All the Danger” for quite some time (at least a year), but I’m pretty sure that “Trying to Get to You” and “In Spite of All the Danger” share some significant melody parts.  Which makes sense because Roy Orbison was one of the Beatles’ inspirations.  George Harrison was in The Traveling Wilburys with him in the ’80s.