Linda Ronstadt named her favourite type of music
Linda Ronstadt spread herself across various genres throughout her career, including rock, country and even the odd bit of light opera. She has been adorned with several awards over her career, including 11 Grammys and an Emmy.
Yet despite her versatility, there is one particular kind of music that Ronstadt prefers. She once said, “I prefer duets to anything else. I love all kinds of ensemble singing; I prefer singing with somebody else to singing alone, always. But my favourite way to sing with somebody else is a duet because there’s so much room to do stuff.”
She added, “When you sing with somebody else, if you’re listening and paying attention, your voice will take on colours and tones and textures that you might not be inclined to exercise when you’re just singing by yourself. There are so many variables in each person’s emotional and musical backgrounds; they’re bringing in all kinds of little colours and textures that may not be in your story, so you get to ride on all that and try to chameleon-colour it. I love that.”
Given Ronstadt’s love for a duet, it’s not surprising to learn that she released an album in 2014 called Duets. The album comprises duets with stars such as Dolly Parton, Frank Sinatra, Aaron Neville and James Taylor. In fact, there had been enough duets with Aaron Neville to put out an entire album, but Ronstadt had been unsure of there being a market for it.
She added, “I could put out a whole record of just Jimmy Webb stuff, or I’ve got enough duets with Aaron (Neville) to make a whole album. But I don’t know how much of a demand there is for it; the record business has changed so profoundly. It’s not something I think about, but every once in a while, a record company comes and says, ‘We’d like to put out this. Do you think you could put this together?’ and I go, ‘OK, I can do that.'”
However, the album’s sequencing had proven to be a stumbling block for Ronstadt. She noted, “It took me three tries to get this together, which is unusual for me. Here I am doing a duet with another woman singer — it’d be Ann Savoy compared to Bette Midler — and you couldn’t put those two together, one after the other. So I started with the most traditional, the most old-fashioned, and sort of went forward from there and got to Frank Sinatra. It was really difficult to get right.”
While Duets charted on the Billboard 200, staying there for six weeks, it wasn’t the most successful of her efforts, and she was somewhat dissatisfied with it. In particular, she seemed irritated at the duet with Emmylou Harris of ‘I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You)’ as her solo version had been far more successful.
