The “beautiful” singer Linda Ronstadt called out of her league
There aren’t many people who seem to look down on their own singing the same way that Linda Ronstadt has done.
She always thrived on playing live over everything else, and even if she delivered show-stopping performances every time she played, there were more than a few times when she would be complaining about how she would have done something better had she had more time to work on her craft. But the beauty of making so many classic performances is being able to learn from every single musician that’s working next to you.
She knew that she was never going to reach the same level as someone like Frank Sinatra in the span of one night, nor was she ever trying to. The whole point was to make music that she felt could make people happy, and some of the biggest songs in her catalogue have been about her making the most out of her voice. But that doesn’t mean making songs that the pop charts necessarily want to hear or anything.
Some of the finest tunes that she ever made almost seemed designed to avoid the pop charts entirely, and even when looking at some of the more underrated pieces of her catalogue, not all of them are meant to be mainstream hits. She had washed her hands of trendchasing long ago, and as long as she had the right pipes to match whatever song she was working on at any given time, that was more than enough for her.
Half of the battle was about her pushing herself every single time she made a new record, and that came from her constantly shifting up her styles depending on what she wanted to hear. Sometimes she would want to make more easy listening music, and others she would be singing in a completely different language, but it was all done in the service of pushing her forward. So when she got the chance to work with someone like Placido Domingo, she jumped in with both feet when first performing with him.
Then again, any singer would have to know what they are getting into working with someone like Domingo. He wasn’t some strange avant-garde singer by any means, but when you listen to the raw power of his voice, you’d better be able to have the kind of vocal dexterity to watch what he’s doing. Ronstadt had that in spades, but she also felt that pieces of her voice didn’t work with what he was doing.
Her singing Le Boheme was something that she wouldn’t trade for the world, but she did feel like there were some pieces that were missing when she sang with him for the first time, saying, “I can’t really sing it as a trained opera singer, because I’m not a trained opera singer, but I understand what it is and I understand what I don’t do. I got to sing it one time with Placido Domingo, though, cause he came to our show, he came to our Boheme, and then we did a show together once and I sang the end of Act I with him, and it was beautiful and I just had a great time doing it but you know, I knew I was over my head.”
But that’s what makes many of Ronstadt’s left turns so interesting. She wanted the chance to make tunes that had something a bit more punchy behind what she was doing, and getting the chance to work with one of the greatest opera singers of her time made her learn a thing or two about what to focus on, whether that was proper breath control or how to structure one of her vocals before she starts singing.
Every one of those times were a different musical lesson, and the idea of learning the ropes from someone like that wasn’t lost on her. She was clearly outmatched in every way, but she was ready to get her game face on and make the kind of tune that left everyone stunned by what she could come up with.
