How The Muppets made Linda Ronstadt leave rock and roll
Linda Ronstadt was never meant to sing one genre for the rest of her life. She had a lot of different sides of her sound that no one would have thought of, and even if she didn’t have the training to be an opera singer, she was going to try whatever she wanted. But it turned out that children’s entertainment was the one X-factor she needed.
Then again, any rock star that appears on a kids show was usually the kiss of death back in the 1970s. As much as Kiss was becoming a household name by the time the decade came to a close, the fact that they were on lunchboxes and being heralded as comic book heroes made everyone think of them as a hard rock version of The Monkees. But Ronstadt was a bit more refined than sheer theatricality.
Broadway wasn’t off the table, but Ronstadt wanted to be treated as more than the typical rock and roll singer. She knew that not everyone in the genre could claim to carry a tune in the same way that the Frank Sinatras of the world could, but when she finally went through with making standards albums or records sung entirely in Spanish, she proved that there was room for singers to get weird as long as they had the right idea.
Right in the middle of her pop career, though, getting the chance to perform with the Muppets was always going to be a tough sell for rockstars. Kermit is one of the single most lovable figures in the world of children’s entertainment, but he’s not exactly considered the coolest figure for a rockstar to align themselves with. But if someone like Alice Cooper could get away clean with performing with the puppets, then Ronstadt could too.
But when Ronstadt got onstage, she wasn’t interested in playing the typical rock and roll songs that she had become known for. After all, hearing her singing ‘You’re No Good’ next to Kermit would have been heartbreaking for the kids at home, but when she motioned to perform the American standard ‘I’ve Got a Crush on You’, that got the wheels turning in her head for what she could do for an entire project.
No one was clamouring for her to go the easy-listening route, but if it weren’t for this show, Ronstadt wouldn’t have found her calling in another genre, saying, “Television is something I don’t do, but Peter Asher called to say the Muppets had asked me on their show- and said I wouldn’t have to sing my hits. I said, ‘If they’ll let me sing ‘I’ve Got a Crush on You’ with Kermit, I’ll do it.’ And they did. And it worked out great. And once I’d gotten a taste of it, there was no turning back.”
For someone like Ronstadt, though, this was a bit of a risk. Especially in the age of MTV, the idea of making songs that catered to the American Songbook was not going to be well-received, and yet listening to her channel the crooners of old is some of the finest singing that she ever did on record.
It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and it’s going to take a lot of convincing to call it “rock”, but the minute that Kermit entered the picture, Ronstadt wasn’t interested in making the same old rock and roll tunes. She had done that part of her career already, and while some people may have been disheartened to see her leave the genre behind, there’s something badass about her going this far out of her depth. She knew it would alienate some people, but if she made this work, she could practically do anything.
