The 1989 song Linda Ronstadt couldn’t connect with: “I didn’t know how”
The first hurdle that any singer should get over when singing a song is believing what they’re singing.
The whole point behind a great tune is to get someone to relate to what the person is singing about, and if the person behind the microphone can’t be asked to care half the time, there’s no reason to think that the rest of the people that showed will be that invested either. Although Linda Ronstadt had prided herself on being able to inhabit every one of her tunes, there were always going to be some tunes that didn’t work out.
But some of the greatest works that Ronstadt ever did came from her being a sonic actor. Years before she went to Broadway and started making her stabs at show tunes, hearing her adopt tunes like ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ became some of the finest work of her career, as if she was genuinely heartbroken and pouring every piece of her heartache into her original vocal take.
That interpretive ability became one of Ronstadt’s defining strengths throughout the 1970s. Unlike many singer-songwriters of the era who relied primarily on autobiographical material, Ronstadt specialised in transforming other people’s songs into something deeply personal through phrasing, tone and emotional precision. Whether covering rock, country, pop or standards, she possessed a rare instinct for locating the emotional centre of a lyric and delivering it with complete conviction.
It also explains why Ronstadt became such an influential figure despite rarely being viewed as a traditional songwriter herself.
Her voice functioned almost like an instrument capable of reshaping the emotional atmosphere of a song entirely, often elevating material into definitive versions that overshadowed the originals. That level of interpretive power is what separated her from many of her contemporaries and ultimately established her as one of the most versatile vocalists of her generation.
And when she had the right tunes behind her on albums like Heart Like a Wheel, she had no problem getting the right vocal down. ‘You’re No Good’ was her excuse to play the dejected lover that was dropping her old flame on his ass, but there was also the countrified heartache in ‘When Will I Be Loved’, which is probably one of the only times when loneliness has sounded so damn happy.
When Ronstadt was first starting out in the rock and roll world, she needed a much better foundation, and that led to the Stone Poneys getting behind her. While they were far from the worst country band in the world, they certainly weren’t going to pack venues the same way The Flying Burrito Brothers were. But once she had tunes like ‘Cry Like a Rainstorm’, there was no one else who could touch her.
Compared to the singing she had done early in her career, though, this tune is like listening to the rough-and-tumble version of what Ronstadt could do. She would spend years making sure her voice was in the best shape possible, and hearing her sound like this felt like she had come full circle from the country-rock queen to one of the biggest stars in the world.
Whenever Ronstadt looks back on her performance, though, all she hears is someone blankly singing the tune, saying, “I didn’t know how to sing then. I was doing songs that I really didn’t relate to. I didn’t do them as well on the record as I did them on stage after I had them in my mouth for a while, but it’s always like that. I didn’t know what I was doing yet. And I wasn’t good at picking material for myself.”
If this is considered poor vocal technique, though, it’s insane to think of what Ronstadt would have sounded like on a good day. She was already in fine form right out of the gate, and even if her performance isn’t exactly perfect, the honesty that comes in her performance sounds like she lived every single second of the tune firsthand.
Ronstadt may have been far more tame compared to what her songs implied, but that didn’t mean that ‘Cry Like a Rainstorm’ should be treated any lesser than her version of a tune like ‘Heatwave’. Everyone has to start somewhere, and with only a few minutes, Ronstadt was already becoming one of the fiercest female singers in America.
