A man standing at the edge of heartbreak, willing to cross any distance for one last chance at love.
When Roy Orbison released Trying to Get to You in 1969, the recording emerged during a transitional period in his career, issued as a single on MGM Records and later preserved on the compilation The All-Time Greatest Hits. While it achieved only a modest chart presence upon release, the song has endured not through commercial dominance but through emotional gravity. In Orbison’s hands, this composition became another entry in his long catalogue of romantic desperation, a performance defined less by era or trend than by timeless human need.
Trying to Get to You was written by Rose Marie McCoy and Charles Singleton, a song already familiar to audiences through earlier interpretations. What distinguishes Orbison’s version is not reinvention but revelation. He strips the song of bravado and replaces it with naked urgency. From the opening lines, the listener is confronted with a voice that sounds bruised but unbroken, a man narrating obstacles not as dramatic events but as inevitable tolls paid in the pursuit of love. Every barrier described feels internal as much as external.
Orbison’s vocal approach is restrained by his own standards, yet that restraint is precisely what gives the performance its weight. He does not soar immediately. He holds back, allowing tension to accumulate, as if each phrase costs him something. When the voice finally lifts, it is not triumphant. It is pleading. This is not a lover confident in reunion but one driven forward by memory and longing alone.
Musically, the arrangement is sparse and deliberate. The rhythm section moves steadily, almost mechanically, reinforcing the sense of relentless forward motion. There is no comfort here, only persistence. The instrumentation never overshadows the vocal. Instead, it acts as a road beneath his feet, unglamorous and unforgiving. The production reflects Orbison’s late 1960s work, warmer and more grounded than his early operatic hits, yet no less intimate.
Lyrically, the song is built on repetition, a device that mirrors obsession rather than simplicity. Each return to the central phrase feels heavier, not redundant. The words suggest a man who has already endured loss, distance, and humiliation, yet continues because stopping would mean accepting finality. In Orbison’s delivery, perseverance is not heroic. It is compulsory.
Within Orbison’s broader body of work, Trying to Get to You belongs to the lineage of songs where love is less a destination than a burden willingly carried. It lacks the dramatic crescendos of his most famous recordings, but it compensates with sincerity and psychological depth. This is a performance for listeners who understand that some journeys are undertaken not because they promise success, but because the heart demands movement.
Decades later, the song remains a quiet testament to Orbison’s unmatched ability to inhabit emotional extremity. He does not merely sing about longing. He sounds as though he is still walking toward it, step by step, refusing to turn back.