“In Dreams” by Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison wrote "In Dreams" on his own, and Monument issued it as a single in February 1963, months before it lent its name to his album In Dreams that July. Fred Foster produced. It's an operatic lament for a lost love that never doubles back on itself, moving through seven distinct sections while Orbison climbs across two octaves, a stretch most singers couldn't dream of reaching.

It made number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hung on in the British charts for five months while he was out on the road with the Beatles. Decades later David Lynch dropped it into Blue Velvet to disquieting effect, and the following year Orbison re-recorded it for an anthology of his hits. Rolling Stone later placed it at 319 among its 500 greatest songs of all time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.