In Dreams (song)

Infobox Single
Name =In Dreams


Cover size =
Border =
Caption =
Artist =Roy Orbison
Album =In Dreams
B-side ="Shahadaroba"
Released =February 1963
Format =
Recorded =
Genre =
Length =
Label =Monument 806
Writer =Roy Orbison
Producer =
Audio sample? =
Certification =
Last single ="Paper Boy"
(1962)
This single ="In Dreams"
(1963)
Next single ="Falling"
(1963)
Misc ="In Dreams" is a song composed and sung by American rock and roll performer Roy Orbison. An operatic ballad of lost love, it was released as a single on Monument Records in February 1963. It became the title track on the album "In Dreams", released in July 1963. It also appears on his posthumous 1989 album "A Black & White Night Live", the soundtrack from the 1988 HBO television special "Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night".

The popular single hit #7 on Billboard's Hot 100 and was his first single to officially cross to their Easy Listening survey (#3).

The song's opening line refers to "A candy-colored clown they call the Sandman". The Sandman is a character in Hans Christian Andersen's children stories who brings sleep and dreams by sprinkling magic sand onto the sleeping.

If the structure of a standard pop song is ABABCAB (verse-chorus, verse-chorus, bridge, verse-chorus), then the structure of "In Dreams" is ABCDE; the lyrics "A candy-colored clown," "I close my eyes," "In dreams I walk with you," "But just before the dawn," and "It's too bad that all these things" all introduce sections of new musical material that are never repeated.

In 1988, songwriters Will Jennings and Richard Kerr wrote a response to "In Dreams" called "In The Real World," which Orbison recorded for his album "Mystery Girl" (which was released posthumously in 1989).

In popular culture

*Perhaps the most famous use of "In Dreams" in media was prominently in David Lynch's landmark cult thriller "Blue Velvet" (1986). The sadistic villain of the film Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper, seems to be obsessed with the tune (along with the Bobby Vinton song "Blue Velvet").

*The song also appeared in, and provided the title for, Neil Jordan's 1999 psychological thriller "In Dreams".

*In 2004, "Rolling Stone" named "In Dreams" as one of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

*M. Ward's "Today's Undertaking" from his 2006 album, "Post-War" is heavily inspired by "In Dreams."