In Dreams (song) - Composition

Composition

Orbison later claimed that the origin for "In Dreams" came to him while he was sleeping, as many of his songs did. He often heard music while asleep with a radio disc jockey announcing that it was Elvis Presley's new song. For this song, however, he was half awake when he imagined it, and thought, "Boy that's good. I need to finish that. Too bad things don't happen in my dreams." When he woke up the next morning, the entire composition was written in 20 minutes.

"In Dreams", like many of Orbison's songs, rejects the verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus structure of the majority of rock and roll fare. Instead it mirrors the procession of falling asleep and becoming immersed in an elusive fantasy. It begins like a lullaby with minimal acoustic guitar strums, with Orbison introducing the listener to "A candy-colored clown they call the sandman" half-spoken and half-sung in a Sprechgesang fashion common in operas and other musical theater performances. The sandman puts him to sleep, where he begins singing about dreams of his lover. Drums pick up the rhythm to follow Orbison's lyrics further into subconsciousness, and a piano joins as the lyrics recount how Orbison spends time with her, accompanied by breathy backup singers. Orchestra strings counter his melody that has the effect of representing a singing voice in themselves.

Using a five- to eight-note range, Orbison's voice rises as he wakes up to find his lover gone. The song trips; the music stops and a staccato tattoo replaces it, as he cries when remembering she has left him. The climax is a powerful crescendo as he cries "It's too bad that all these things / Can only happen in my dreams", and the resolution follows his voice from falsetto to the final note an octave below as he sings "Only in dreams / In beautiful dreams", as all the instruments and singers conclude with him abruptly. The song never repeats a section. In two minutes and forty-eight seconds, it goes through seven movements with distinct melodies and chord progressions. The first two sections are sixteen bars each, but the other sections are only eight bars each. In comparison to the standard form of pop songs in AABA — where A represents a standard verse, and B represents a variation, usually referred to as the bridge — "In Dreams", with each variation, can be represented as Intro-A-B-C-D-E-F.