(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 8 March 2026 21:30, UK
Linda Ronstadt didn’t start out being one of the greatest pop singers in the world.
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’t mean that pop needed to be full of pinup stars in her mind, either.
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’t a bad thing. Bob Dylan might be considered one of the worst singers in the world for someone that doesn’t 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’s massive pipes for ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.
But somewhere around the 1980s, Ronstadt felt that pop wasn’t 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’s New was when it wasn’t 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.
The era of MTV might not have felt the same way, but Ronstadt could have really cared less. She didn’t grow up thinking that she was going to find her calling on television, and even if her contemporaries like Eagles 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.
A lot of the stars from the time weren’t the kind of people she wanted to align with, but that didn’t mean that the right singer couldn’t 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.
Dave Stewart might have been the brains behind a lot of the backing tracks, but Ronstadt felt that in terms of technique, Lennox was among the greatest in her field, saying, “I’m a pop singer, which by its very definition I’m a lot more ‘homegrown’ in my technical ability. But the more I refine my ability, to speak in the tone and cadence I want to, the more clear I can express myself musically. I think there are a lot of rock singers that are highly evolved in technique. Annie Lennox, you’re not going to find a more technically refined kind of singer.”
And considering the artists that Eurhythmics surrounded themselves with, it’s not like they were trying to be a fly-by-night duo, either. Stewart was within inches of becoming a Traveling Wilbury when they first got started, and since Lennox looked after Tom Petty after his house burned down, they were a lot more interested in aligning themselves with artists who were in it for the long haul.
‘Sweet Dreams’ might be the big hit that everyone remembers them for, but looking through Lennox’s back catalogue, there’s a lot more that she had to offer. No one was singing with that much precision, and if you listen to a song like ‘Here Comes the Rain Again’, you’re going to hear someone who is in total control of their instrument.