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(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n
Sun 8 March 2026 21:30, UK <\/p>\n
Linda Ronstadt<\/a> didn\u2019t start out being one of the greatest pop singers in the world. <\/p>\n She was a brilliant vocalist with a mic in her hand, but even when she had that powerhouse voice belting out her favourite songs at the Troubadour bar, it was going to take a long time before she was ready to make the leap towards more sophisticated music later in her career. But even when she was making some of the greatest genre pivots that any singer had ever done, that didn\u2019t mean that pop needed to be full of pinup stars in her mind, either.<\/p>\n The pop music sphere did have more than its fair share of unique voices, but even if not all of them had the best tone and diction when they sang, that wasn\u2019t a bad thing. Bob Dylan might be considered one of the worst singers in the world for someone that doesn\u2019t know any better, but when it comes to songs about the everyman on the street singing about the horrors that he saw every single day, it was much better to have that world-weary voice than Ronstadt\u2019s massive pipes for \u2018The Times They Are A-Changin\u2019.<\/p>\n But somewhere around the 1980s, Ronstadt felt that pop wasn\u2019t where she belonged anymore. She wanted the chance to stretch out and do other things, and while her stint on Broadway may have helped her gain a foothold in another area of the music industry, What\u2019s New was when it wasn\u2019t a fluke anymore. Her time with Nelson Riddle was paying off, and she wanted the opportunity to sing anything and everything she could whenever she stepped up to the microphone.<\/p>\n The era of MTV might not have felt the same way, but Ronstadt could have really cared less. She didn\u2019t grow up thinking that she was going to find her calling on television, and even if her contemporaries like Eagles<\/a> tried their hand at making videos every now and again, it was better for her to leave her best work onstage than to try to prop herself up next to the likes of Madonna and George Michael.<\/p>\n A lot of the stars from the time weren\u2019t the kind of people she wanted to align with, but that didn\u2019t mean that the right singer couldn\u2019t surprise her. There were still belters that could reach the high heavens like Whitney Houston, but when Ronstadt first heard Eurythmics for the first time, it was love at first sound when she heard Annie Lennox. This was someone fully in control of their voice, and she felt that no other singer had come close to her.<\/p>\n