The songwriter Linda Ronstadt called the best of the century
For all of the great chops Linda Ronstadt had, there was never a single singer more humble about their voice.
She was always the first to say that she wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of her natural voice, and a lot of the time it came down to getting the right songs that would suit her voice rather than focusing on whether or not a certain note sounded perfect. But when it came to picking the right songs for her to sing, it was as much about the songwriters she was associating with than having her producers find whatever song best suited her voice.
Because when listening to Ronstadt’s greatest tunes, it wasn’t so much about finding songs that were in her range. She could go in a lot of different directions with her voice, and while that would include everything from easy listening music to Mexican songs, Ronstadt was more than willing to put in the work to hear the sounds she heard in her head. And it also didn’t hurt that she landed in what would be considered the mecca of all great singer-songwriters when she moved to Los Angeles.
It’s one thing to be able to sing alongside legends like Neil Young, but the fact that she could put together a supergroup like Eagles as her backing band was the kind of luck most artists dream of. She was truly operating on another level even by Don Henley’s standards, but when looking at the finest writers of her time, it always came back to how people like Jackson Browne and JD Souther constructed some of their songs.
Neither of them had the most brilliant vocal range in California or anything, but it was about the story that they told whenever they had a guitar in their hands. They had the potential to break people’s hearts in a single line if they wanted to, but in terms of raw musical talent, some of Ronstadt’s favourite rock singers were actually coming from the other side of the country. Carole King had written beautiful songs, and even The Beatles changed the way most people saw rock and roll, but no one could reach the same level as Paul Simon in her mind.
While Simon would be the first to say that he was nowhere near the true legends of the music world, what he did with Simon and Garfunkel and beyond is still some of the finest writing anyone has ever done. He had started as a humble folkie, but his knowledge of everything from classical music to jazz harmonies put him in a completely different class than everyone else in the rock field.
He was someone stretching the boundaries of the genre, and that kind of genius wasn’t lost on Ronstadt, saying, “Paul is a brilliant songwriter. I think he’s the best of the writers in the second half of the 20th Century when it comes to pure pop songwriting. It’s so silly, really, when it comes to composition. Now, in the first half of the 20th Century, there were the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hart who could write better than anybody. Only Paul Simon reaches that level of quality.”
While there are definitely songwriters that Ronstadt has put on the same pedestal like Bob Dylan, Simon truly mastered both sides of what it meant to write great songs. Dylan would even say that he isn’t one of the greatest singers in the world, and his early work only needed a few chords to get the job done, but Simon struck that perfect balance of being an incredible storyteller while also throwing in extensions on an idea that left most people befuddled.
But the real measure of Simon as a true artist is the consistency with which he’s made music over the years. There are countless artists that have had those few records that no one wants to talk about, but if you look through Simon’s discography, there isn’t a single album that he’s ever made that doesn’t have at least one great tune on it.
