Today is Linda day. Let the wind and the rain commence upon us as we breathe in deeply the earthy graciousness that is her voice! I’m bewildered that it’s taken me this long to finally represent the beast of a voice that belonged to Linda Ronstadt. Honestly, I’m flummoxed. I guess she wasn’t as near to my radar as my other childhood divas, but in a world where retrospect is king and the past just seems to be a rose-tinted land of joy and innocence, I can hear songs by Linda and immediately recognize the perfection. We recently watched a documentary about this silken-voiced chanteuse, and it reinforced in me the joy many of her songs brought (and still bring) me. Today I’ll feature two; You’re No Good has that mid-seventies rock vibe that harkens back to AM radio and Midnight Special. I can almost remember her shag hair as she cradled the mic and not just sung but felt this song. Therein lies the magic of Linda Ronstadt. A few years later she released Hurt So Bad. The sound was as amazing, but this time her voice was apologetic and hopeless in a delightfully perfect way. She made these lyrics come alive the way a singer should, the way a great singer does. Sadly, this song got shuffled around and lost in the fold of what was an oddball mash up of sounds converging in 1980. The airwaves were bulging at the proverbial seams with the burgeoning sound of new wave (Blondie) and the trickling vestiges of AM radio (Captain & Tennille), so this profoundly heartbreaking ballad ended up somewhere at the lower end of the year-end pop charts. Thus, today I challenge you to play this song and try and hear what I hear. To me, it still hurts so bad because of that perfect voice.
From the historical writing archive. Original date: October 30, 2020. Recovered from local source material; editorial review is still in progress.