![\"Linda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Linda-Ronstadt-1980s-Singer-Musician-Far-Out-Magazine-4-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Linda Ronstadt)<\/p>\n
Fri 24 April 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n
From the minute Linda Ronstadt<\/a> started singing, she was destined to become one of the finest pop singers the world had ever known. <\/p>\n No one else in Los Angeles had that much power in their voice whenever they sang, and even if Ronstadt was a bit more critical of her older self whenever going back to her classic records, it was much better that the rest of us heard those massive songs when we could. But even if Ronstadt was known<\/a> as the \u2018Queen of Country Rock\u2019 for most of her career, she didn\u2019t like the idea of being confined to the genre for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n If anything, she didn\u2019t belong in rock and roll to begin with. She liked the idea of following in the footsteps of other great vocalists, but compared to what The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin were doing, she didn\u2019t think she fit in at all. She could appreciate the rootsiness of people like Eagles and Neil Young<\/a>, but compared to what the rest of the rock and roll world was doing, there was no way that she was going to put her voice through its paces the same way Janis Joplin had done.<\/p>\n She had a much softer register, and she felt she was better suited trying to working outside of the norms every time she played. And since she never felt that rock and roll was her true home, she first felt comfortable with making the music that she wanted once she started working on Broadway<\/a>. Pirates of Penzance wasn\u2019t the masterpiece that she was looking to make by any stretch, but when she began working with Nelson Riddle, she finally got a sense of what she wanted to sing.<\/p>\n Her calling was in making the kind of records that Rosemary Clooney would have been proud to sing, and while that\u2019s pretty much the antithesis of rock in many respects, she could still revel in listening to people like George Gershwin whenever his songs came on. And when you look at the way she looked at rock and roll, it wasn\u2019t a shock to see her gravitating towards the biggest names in easy listening.<\/p>\n Since she rarely wrote her own material, a lot of her job was picking the best songs that she could relate to, and that normally meant making friends with the best songwriters she could find. And while Elvis Costello was a bit standoffish about Ronstadt using his songs in the 1980s, she felt that even the biggest names in rock couldn\u2019t compare to melodies like \u2018Summertime\u2019 whenever she sang them.<\/p>\n This was far more sophisticated than anything else she played, and any other rock songwriter was going to be playing second fiddle to what Gershwin did in her mind, saying<\/a>, \u201cIf someone brought me a new Elvis Costello song and I put it side by side with something by George Gershwin, there\u2019d be no contest. To me, the choice is easy. For a singer who\u2019s arrived at a point where you\u2019d like to have a little more sophisticated sentiment, Gershwin is what comes out of your mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n And it\u2019s easier to picture that when you look at her other musical heroes. She felt that people like Young were making rock sound fantastic in her prime, but when talking about the greatest pop singers that she had ever heard, you were always going to get answers like Frank Sinatra<\/a> before the biggest names in rock, and for the rest of her career, Ronstadt seemed at least willing to work on more sophisticated genres a lot more often than rock and roll.<\/p>\n So while you can call Ronstadt a \u201csell-out\u201d for turning her back on rock altogether, it\u2019s not that simple this time around. Many people would have killed to hear her sing her classics one more time, but this is the first time when someone leaving their genre behind meant them actually becoming a lot more happy with what they were doing. Anyone could have done it for the money, but Ronstadt purely wanted to make the music that she felt suited her best. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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