The singer Linda Ronstadt said nobody can ever touch: “No one in her league”
The pop world has always been incredibly subjective when deciding what “good singing” is. It’s sometimes a lot easier to relate to the person singing rather than focusing on how good their voice is, but when listening to her personal favourites, Linda Ronstadt knew how to separate the musical personalities from the technicians half the time.
By listening to her back catalogue, Ronstadt has developed the kind of resume that reads like the Olympics for pop singers. She had already worked with some of the best musicians in the country-rock sphere, like Don Henley and Glenn Frey, but seeing her inhabit everything from Broadway shows to Mexican music to some of the most beautiful standards gave her the kind of variety that no other artist could touch.
It’s not like the rest of the world wasn’t taking notice of that kind of track record, either. Ronstadt was far from the first person to put out a collection of musical standards, but opening the door for a pop singer to channel their inner croon is the reason why people like Lady Gaga have an avenue today to work on their respective jazz covers albums.
Then again, Ronstadt knew what made a good singer work in the context of rock and roll as well. One of her favourite voices in the genre was always Neil Young, and while the Canadian folk rock icon doesn’t necessarily have the greatest voice that anyone has ever heard, it’s perfectly suited to whatever he’s singing, whether that’s his classics or some of his later surprises like Harvest Moon.
But even with Ronstadt’s track record, she knew that she was no match for what people were doing in the big leagues. There are people who think that stars like Sinatra are what “real” singers are meant to be doing, but the classical world is a completely different thing, and even if Ronstadt could light up a stage, there’s something about listening to a trained soprano that was enough to knock her out.
The classical world was never that far away from the Broadway stages, but in Ronstadt’s eyes, listening to Maria Callas was like looking at a totally different level of musical beauty. When asked who her favourite singer was, Ronstadt said that Callas was in a total league of her own, saying, “Maria Callas. There’s no one in her league. That’s it. Period.” But what makes Callas work is that she’s a blend of both vocal styles that Ronstadt was always talking about.
Listening through to her singing operatic notes is fantastic even if you don’t know the backstory of what she’s singing about, but regardless of any musical barriers, you can feel the love, pain, joy, and every emotion in between when she sings in the same way that Ronstadt was talking about hearing Young’s voice on his first handful of records.
Although Ronstadt said that she is nowhere near Callas’s voice and has since bowed out of the music industry, it’s always good to have those artists that exist in a totally different league than you are. It might seem unattainable most of the time, but anyone’s goal is trying to woodshed for years on end until you finally find your own voice or even find a way to match what your heroes had done.
