Roy Orbison died in 1988. For some reason I thought it was this event that made me download his discography. However, I would've been 6 years old at the time, and the MP3 would not've been invented. This leads me to believe my memory is mistaken. Whatever the reason was, I discovered Roy Orbison at the beginning of my graduate studies at Queen's (September 2005 for the record). Roy was then put on repeat for about 6 months following that. To put it plainly, Roy is fantastic. I can feel the pain in his soul while he sings songs like In Dreams, Falling and Crying. According to Wikipedia, Roy had a range of three octaves, and although I'm no great appreciator of the finer points of singing, I can sense his vocal mastery.  Wikipedia also details Roy's tragic personal life: the death of his 25-year-old wife in a motorcycle accident followed by the death of two of his children in a house fire while he was touring in England.  Maybe that's why you can feel the pain in his soul while he sings.

Another interesting tidbit about Roy was an observation my girlfriend Renee made the other day. She pointed out that the subject matter of Roy's songs were very similar to that of Dashboard Confessional and other emo artists. Of course! Although Roy's songs usually have a pleasing, happy beat, they are usually always about depressing or emotional things.  For instance, Crying is about an old girlfriend he runs into and Falling is about a girl Roy didn't know he loved until it was too late.  Roy is emo for our parents. He's proto-emo. If you need proof, take a look at the following lyrics:

I was all right for a while
I could smile for a while
Then I saw you last night
You held my hand so tight
As you stopped to say hello
You wished me well
You couldn't tell that
I've been crying over you
Crying over you and you said "So long"
Left me standing all alone
Alone and crying, crying, crying, crying.

And now:

But your taste still lingers on my lips like I just placed them upon yours
and I starve...
I starve for you.
But this new diet's liquid
and dulling to the senses.
And it's crude, but it will do.

Which one is Roy Orbison and which is Dashboard Confessional? If you didn't know both artists, I think you'd be hard-pressed to tell.