The album Linda Ronstadt said was the most difficult: “One of the hardest I’ve ever done”
A lot of the vocal techniques that most take for granted always seemed like a walk in the park for Linda Ronstadt.
Her sense of tone and phrasing was what every other country rock singer would have dreamed of, and listening to her later records, she was always willing to push herself to do a little bit better until she felt that her best work ended up on her record. A lot of those early albums may have been a ton of fun, but there were also more than a few where Ronstadt had to pull out a piece of her soul on the final mix.
Then again, it’s not like Ronstadt was screaming her brains out every time she made a record, either. That wasn’t her style, and even if she managed to belt on ‘You’re No Good’, it was much more about getting the grit in her voice than worrying about the pure power she put into every single word. It was all in good fun, but it wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do for the rest of her life, either.
By the time she had reached the end of the 1970s, she was already itching to move on to something different, and even when covering new wave songs, there was always a piece missing from her tunes. She wanted the chance to make the best vocals that she could, and that meant honing her craft on Broadway and leaving rock and roll behind altogether.
Although this was the kind of move that would have killed any other artist, Ronstadt made the whole thing look easy when she first started. No, it wasn’t the kind of rock and roll tunes that most people expected, but that at least got her warmed up to doing new and exciting things in the future. And after years of singing along to Rolling Stones tunes and getting the best tracks that everyone from Randy Newman and JD Souther could have written, she knew the next step was going into the world of standards.
The album What’s New may have been the exact opposite of what the rock and roll world wanted to hear, but Ronstadt saw the whole thing as a new challenge for her to face whenever she started singing, saying, “Working with Nelson [Riddle] was so great because he’s the tops in his field. And I think this is the best singing and the best songs I’ve ever done. But it also was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
And when working with someone like Nelson Riddle, any other singer would have been shaking at the prospect of getting every tune right. This is the same guy who helped work the magic for Frank Sinatra on some of his classic tunes, and while ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ wasn’t exactly the rock and roll type, there’s a certain swagger to his delivery that only seemed reserved for the true legends.
Ronstadt could have easily turned the whole thing into a vanity project, but she clearly had done her homework before she even walked into the studio. She knew that she was entering the same vocal realm as her heroes like Rosemary Clooney, and if she could pull off something like this, then what was stopping her from trying to emulate the Mexican music that she heard growing up or turning towards adult contemporary in her later years?
Any other artist would have had second thoughts about switching up their sound drastically, but what Ronstadt did on What’s New might have been the most badass choice she could have made. Anyone could spend their time trapped in one sound for the rest of their lives, but all good rock and rollers know how to disrupt the system, and by going back to easy listening territory, Ronstadt walked away looking like one of the most fearless rock stars ever to touch a microphone.
