There Is Only One – ROY ORBISON***

Ride Away/You Fool You/Two Of A Kind/This Is Your Song/I’m In A Blue Blue Mood/If You Can’t Say Something Nice/Claudette/Afraid To Sleep/Sugar & Honey/Summer Love/Big As I Can Dream/Wondering

There Is Only One was Roy Orbison's first album for the MGM label. His single releases in 1965 were noticeably less successful than in the previous two years. (US:55 UK:10)

"Orbison's premier album for his new label MGM is somewhat of a hit and miss affair. The entire record was materialized in a single month, and there is too much of a MOR, lilting piano mood goin' on here, especially on such tracks as Two Of A Kind and the meandering, late night supper club ballad Summer Love."

"It ain't all bad. Not at all. First off there is Ride Away and its flipside Wondering. Aside from these two gems, there is the eerily haunting, shimmering ballad Afraid To Sleep and the delicately, superbly arranged baroque-rock of Big As I Can Dream."

"The problem is that Roy's new songs don't have the same presence as his peak early '60's material. He's still mining the same 'tortured love' vein, only not as memorably. Roy's voice raises the best of this album's offerings Afraid To Sleep and Big As I Can Dream to an undeniably high level, but there's nothing here that can quite stand up to his greatest work."

"The results of his first album for the label were unimpressive. He forsakes much of the rock & roll foundation of his classic early-'60s hits for Nashville country & western on most of the LP, complete with bar-room piano. This doesn't approach the magnificence of his best work. The highlight is the strange, almost rambling Ride Away."

"Roy's first album for MGM was solid, but much underappreciated. There Is Only One Roy Orbison had Ride Away and many other great songs that, for the most part, went unheard and ignored by the top 40 stations of the era, which is a shame."

"This is Roy Orbison completely at ease and self-assured in the style that he defined for himself in the five years at Monument Records, prior to this first album release