The rock songwriter Linda Ronstadt called the greatest of the century: “He’s the best”
Linda Ronstadt didn’t always see herself fitting in with the rest of rock and roll.
She was already becoming one of the greatest singers that California had ever spit out, but even if she rose to prominence as part of the country rock movement, there was a whole lot more for her to offer than singing the same boozy rock and roll songs every single night. What she did needed to reach a little bit farther, and every one of her favourite songwriters were thinking along the same lines when they made their classics.
Because when you look at Ronstadt’s career, she didn’t envision having the same kind of voice that Janis Joplin did. Her favourite music came from the world of easy listening years before rock and roll was a major force, and while she turned the Sunset Strip inside out whenever she sang songs like ‘You’re No Good’, the ballads were the songs that always stuck with her every single time she sang them.
And since the early 1980s saw rock and roll turning a corner, Ronstadt figured it was the right time for her to pivot as well. She wasn’t going to be a pinup star like Madonna was whenever she sang, so the least that she could do was make an album that stretched her singing voice. What’s New was the first time that she showed herself to be capable of singing American standards, but her heart was always in making songs that were a bit more forward-thinking than American music.
Some of her most treasured projects came when she was making records entirely in Spanish, and while it wasn’t the most profitable move of her career, she was willing to move outside of her comfort zone every time she made a new record. Her entire goal was to make music that no one would have ever thought of at the time, and when you look at what someone like Paul Simon was doing, they seemed like kindred spirits in many ways.
Ronstadt wasn’t going to turn up and sing on every single one of Simon’s songs or anything, but when looking at what he did with Graceland, Ronstadt was knocked out by how he could blend different genres together. No one would have thought that a folk rock icon could have made South African musicians sound so natural on one of their records, but Ronstadt knew that it only came from him knowing the ins and outs of songwriting better than anyone.
There were plenty of artists that she fell in love with for their standards like Gershwin, but Ronstadt felt that no other rock and roller could touch Simon, saying, “Paul is a brilliant songwriter. I think he’s the best of the writers in the second half of the 20th Century when it comes to pure pop songwriting. It’s so silly, really, when it comes to composition. I mean, how can you compare him to Dylan or Leonard Cohen? Those three are the giants. Now, in the first half of the 20th Century, there were the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hart who could write better than anybody. Only Paul Simon reaches that level of quality.”
Only time will tell how Simon’s songs will hold up, but it does feel like his work will outlast most of his brethren when looking at his track record. His melodies are so effortless every single time he sings them, and if we’re grading him on the same level as Rodgers and Hart, there’s no question that ‘The Sound of Silence’ would be able to put him in that same league of classic pop songwriters.
But that doesn’t come from someone that only knows how to write one song incredibly well. Simon knew that he had mastered one form of songwriting by the time he reached the 1970s, and the best that he could do was keep taking chances and see where his muse led him every single time he made a new record.
