There Goes My Heart, Into the Void of Sadness That Is Roy Orbison’s “Only The Lonely”

While this is one of the sadder songs ever recorded, projecting the misery onto Roy Orbison would be a mistake. It wasn’t necessarily Orbison’s sadness that helped transcribe that song. In 1980, he explained to the NME that many of his most painful songs were written in happier times.

Roy Orbison stated: “I’ve always been very content when I wrote all those songs. By this I’m saying that a lot of people think you have to live through something before you can write it, and that’s true in some cases, but I remember the times that I was unhappy or discontent, and I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t communicate, and I certainly couldn’t write a song, no way. All the songs I wrote that were successful were written when I was in a contented state of mind.”

This was one of the first songs Roy Orbison and Joe Melson wrote together. The inspiration for the lyrics came from Melson, who as a teenager fell in love with a girl who left him brokenhearted, not Orbison’s sadness. Melson says that she took off in a Cadillac and the words to this song came to him naturally.

Joe Melson also says that the song was his proudest moment as a songwriter, as it was his first hit with Orbison. The pair would write many more hits for Orbison, including “Running Scared,” “Crying” and “Blue Bayou.” Not too shabby!