Mystery Girl

Mystery Girl is simply an incredible album featuring a reenergized Roy Orbison easily uniting his unique voice to a modern sound that appealed to any number of ears; the released tracks from this album found ample playing time on both pop rock and country radio stations. Perhaps the first single, You Got It, got too much attention, as it was nearly played to death over the course of the first half of 1989, but that is just a tribute to the wonderful beauty and infectious beat and rhythm of this song co-written by Orbison and Wilbury buddies Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty. The second track on the album, In the Real World, marks an abrupt change in tone; bringing to mind Roy’s classic song In Dreams; Orbison captures your heard on the first note and soars with it through the clouds that only he possessed the means of exploring. This haunting track is, in my opinion, the best song on the album. Roy decides to rock a little bit on (All I Can Do Is) Dream You before stopping to wax poetic and heartbreaking on the slow ballad A Love So Beautiful, a song featuring a little musical support from co-writer Jeff Lynne and George Harrison. California Blue (another Orbison-Lynne-Petty venture), The Only One, and Windsurfer are great songs in their own right, but special attention must be shown the remaining three tracks. Careless Heart is a beautiful song of love and loss that seems to convey a sense of the type of feelings we felt over the loss of this man taken much too soon from our midst. She’s a Mystery To Me, written by U2’s Bono and The Edge, presents Roy with a slightly different type of song that he easily makes his own, hitting the high notes perfectly on the choruses. Then there is The Comedians, a song written by Elvis Costello; this is vintage Roy Orbison, delivering a strikingly visual display of betrayal and loss, the very subjects Roy seemed to understand more than any other singer out there.

Mystery Girl is a very special album that Roy Orbison fans will treasure and play often for the rest of our lives. I wish Roy would have lived to see the incredible reception this album received from fans, but one can take comfort in the fact that Orbison left this world on top where he always belonged.

The big hit from this album was, of course, You got it, a catchy up-tempo song that received plenty of airplay on radio stations across the world. It deserved all the success it got but there are other songs here that I regard as even better. While Roy was always good at up-tempo rocking songs (as he showed in the sixties with Oh pretty woman), he could do so much else. With classic ballads and mid-tempo songs such as California blue, She's a mystery to me, Careless heart, In the real world and A love so beautiful, this album maintains a high standard from start to finish.

Every Roy Orbison fan should own this album, which was his last and best album of original material. And if you're not already a Roy Orbison fan, this album may cause you to become one.

This album, Mystery Girl, which would prove to be the last that he would release, (though his wife did release 'King of Hearts' some time after his death) firmly establishes Orbison as being one of the greatest influences in Rock and Roll history. From the inspirational "You Got It", to the incredibly moving "A love so Beautiful" and of course to the nearly impossible notes of "Shes a mystery to Me", this album shows that the voice that established Roy Orbison in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame not only survived well into the 80's, but that his voice further developed and had reached levels of near perfection. Certainly nobody past or presnt could sing these songs like Roy Orbison. This album compliments, perfectly, Roys earlier recording in the 60's from his major hits of 'Crying', 'Its over', 'Running Scared', 'Only the lonely', and the vastly underrated 'In Dreams'. In comparison to his earlier work brought up to date as seen in 1987 in 'A black and White Night', it is clear that 'Mystery Girl' deserves to stand alongside the legendary Orbison of the 60's. This album has everything.