The 1990s singer Linda Ronstadt called one of the greatest: “The best I’ve ever heard”
There aren’t many singers who can be as much of a stickler for perfection as Linda Ronstadt was.
She was never going to settle for anything less than the best whenever she made one of her records, and even when she had to bow out of singing once she became too ill to do so, it was all in service of her trying to keep the best document of her singing rather than trying to shortchange her audience. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life doing worse versions of her best songs, but she knew that some of the biggest singers of the new school were doing even better than she could in her prime.
But it’s not like the modern pop scene would look the same without Ronstadt coming first. Not everyone had to be singing the same kinds of country rockers that she did back in the day, but if you look at the kind of people that she inspired, everyone from Sheryl Crow to Stevie Nicks probably wouldn’t have existed were it not for her kicking the door down with the Eagles by her side in her early days.
If you look at her other track record for making standards records, she was actually well ahead of the curve in a lot of respects, too. The entire concept of a pop singer going into easy listening doesn’t seem like such a taboo these days, and given the rise in Spanish music as of late, the fact that she was singing her favourite Mexican tunes that she heard as a child all the way back in the 1980s was much more forward-thinking than most people would have been willing to go at the time.
Other singers may have been wowing people on the charts with synth-heavy songs, but Ronstadt preferred to look at some artists that were a bit more off the beaten path. There was a lot that the music world had to offer that wasn’t necessarily rooted in pop music, and hearing Sinead O’Connor sing for the first time was when she realised that there were a whole lot more areas to explore with the human voice.
O’Connor’s legacy may have got a bit muddy when people tore her a new one for her Saturday Night Live performance, but no amount of scorn from the public could put a dent in her vocals. Her voice was perfect for every single song that she sang, and while Ronstadt came from a much different world, she could still acknowledge when O’Connor was absolutely killing every single vocal line she ever sang.
Ronstadt first heard her on ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ just like everyone else, but she felt that what O’Connor was doing went well beyond what the typical alternative pop stars were doing, saying, “Oh man, I think she is the voice of the century. She’s out there, I saw her sing one time, and I was just so blown away I couldn’t even believe it. I think maturity will help her, because she’s a great singer, just one of the best singers I’ve ever heard.” And a lot of the draw that O’Connor had came from her fearlessness whenever she performed.
She stuck to her principles whenever she was out onstage, and even if the repercussions were very harsh, she was always going to put her feelings out there for the world to see. And there’s a good chance that Ronstadt saw a bit of herself in O’Connor as well, especially since she always did what she wanted and stuck to her principles even when her label told her that she was making a huge mistake when making albums like What’s New.
There are countless artists who would have gladly tried their hand at copying Ronstadt’s voice whenever they could, but part of what her love O’Connor was because she was never trying to overtly copy someone every time she sang. She could only be herself, and that’s all you could ever ask for of any singer whenever they are showing a different side of themselves on their tunes.
