Roy Orbison

His first hit, capturing Orbison as the rockabilly singer Sun Records wanted. Heard alongside the later ballads, it lets you hear what he was trying to escape.

• A short, single repeating echo (slapback echo) sits over the whole vocal — the signature sound of Sun Studio, the same texture as Elvis's Sun recordings.
• The lead guitar in the instrumental break is believed to be Orbison's own. Listen to its short, twangy country-style notes and you can tell he was a guitarist before he was a singer.
• The vocal is in the rockabilly manner, clipping and bouncing each note. Set it beside the long, soaring ballad singing of a few years later and you see another face of the same voice.
• At just over 2 minutes, verses and breaks repeat in quick succession — the form itself shows a song made for dancing.

The moment he finally found his own sound at Monument and Studio B. The narrator who confides a heart only the lonely know became the prototype for most of the songs that followed.

• In the opening, the male chorus repeats low syllables and in effect serves as a rhythm instrument — it is the chorus, more than the drums, that drives the song.
• Just as Bill Porter recalled, the voice and chorus sit up front and the drums at the back. Listen on earbuds and you can feel how far the drums have receded.
• Listen in the second half for the point where the chest voice crosses into head voice (falsetto) — the seam is almost inaudible.
• It runs less than 2½ minutes. Its power lies in compression, climbing from confession to climax in so short a time.

Set to a bolero rhythm, it tells of a narrator, trembling with jealousy and unease, who dreads the return of an old flame. It was his first U.S. No. 1.

• From start to finish the snare drum repeats the same march-like rhythm (bolero) — as in Ravel's “Boléro,” repetition builds the tension.
• There is no refrain. Follow how a song that starts quietly grows in only one direction (crescendo) over 2 minutes or so.
• The final high note is sung not in falsetto but in full chest voice. The story goes that when his falsetto was buried by the orchestra during the session, he switched to singing it with his whole voice.
• The ending turns only at the very last moment — the story's twist is built to land exactly on the music's climax.

The confession of a man who falls apart alone after a chance meeting with an old love. Written with Joe Melson, it is the song in which his lonely narrator goes to the farthest extreme.

• The opening lays down guitar and strings quietly while the voice begins low — the narrator's held-back emotion is written straight into the arrangement.
• As the song goes on, strings and chorus are added one by one. Just before the final climactic high note, listen for the instant the accompaniment falls away.
• The sob-like, trembling, drawn-out notes return again and again, yet the pitch never wavers — you hear emotion and control at once.
• The duet version rerecorded with k.d. lang in 1987 won a Grammy in 1989. Compared with the original, the way the two voices, male and female, trade the high notes is something new.

A song about a man who meets his love only in dreams, and the one he said came to him in a dream. 23 years later, “Blue Velvet” cast an entirely different shadow over it.

• The opening begins low in the range, as if spoken — the manner of someone talking to himself just before sleep.
• Seven distinct sections follow one after another, and the song never once turns back. Listen for a chorus and you realize the song keeps moving on to a new scene.
• In the final section the voice soars nearly an octave. The loss of the moment you wake from a dream is drawn in pitch.
• Hear it alongside the scene in “Blue Velvet” where actor Dean Stockwell lip-syncs to this song, and you learn how sinister the same song can sound.

The man who always sang of heartbreak became a teasing fellow calling out to a woman passing by. Said to have been inspired by Claudette, the song went to number one in America and Britain.

• The guitar riff that follows the opening drumbeat is known to be a thickened sound made by several guitars playing the same line together.
• Midway through comes a passage where he lets out a low growl — said to have been improvised, it is an unexpected streak of playfulness from a high-voiced singer.
• In the second half the tempo slows into a bridge where the narrator hesitates. Don't miss the hush just before the fast riff returns.
• The story turns at the ending — listen for the moment the music swings back into the riff and the narrator's mood changes.
• Compare it with Van Halen's 1982 remake and you can hear how the same riff changes on a distorted guitar.

A song from his final year, written with Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty, it reached number 9 in America after his death. Its bright narrator, promising to give everything, stands in contrast to the long line of songs of solitude.

• True to Jeff Lynne's production, layer upon layer of acoustic guitar strumming is stacked up and the drums sit firmly up front — the very opposite of the arrangement on the 1960s Monument recordings.
• Listen to the high note at the end of the chorus. The 52-year-old voice holds almost exactly the range it had in his 20s.
• The chorus has Lynne's signature tightly stacked harmonies — the same texture as the Traveling Wilburys recordings.
• Footage of him singing it on the stage of an awards ceremony in Antwerp, Belgium, in November 1988 is known as one of his last televised performances.