Who was the best-selling female artist of the 1970s?
Despite what people might say, the criteria for being a female singer have never been a broken heart. “You can use tragedy,” Stevie Nicks once said. “When you go back to sing those songs, you reattach yourself to what happened.”
In the 1970s, when Nicks was one of the biggest forces in rock, almost every interview she did felt a little…embarrassing. Watching them now, it’s hard to ignore the discomfort that crops up when you observe the different journalistic choices, with most questions centring around Nicks’ personal life rather than the music. Of course, there could have been many reasons for this, but one remains clear.
Today, we see a lot of the same discomfort. But this time, it usually comes from the cesspit of social media. Under a post about Sabrina Carpenter’s alternative album cover for Man’s Best Friend, one pleasant commenter very eloquently suggested that everything the ‘Espresso’ singer does lacks artistic integrity because all she does is for money. An unnecessary means to be directly sexist, some might say. A take as hot as fire.
But there’s always something else, something difficult to swallow that comes from the different standards set for men and women in music. Bob Dylan is a genius because he used his words better than everybody else, but he also drew from personal experience. Joan Baez, well – that’s another story for another time, but let’s just say that her sidelining had nothing to do with her stories of heartache, and everything to do with people viewing female songwriters as amateur versions of their male counterparts.
It’s the same accusation over and over: women writing from the heart lack substance. But when they appear from a different corner entirely, reinventing the wheel with a demeanour as cool as jazz, what then? Enter the brightest flame of the 1970s: Linda Ronstadt.
Who was the best-selling female artist of the 1970s?
One of the worst things anybody could ever say about Ronstadt is that she lacks artistic integrity. People try, though, suggesting that Ronstadt didn’t actually bring anything fresh to the table, and while their gripe starts and ends with how she made her name on covers, this feels entirely off the mark. And not just because it enters the typically sexist territory most revert to when evaluating a woman’s legacy.
But never mind how obviously talented Ronstadt is. She was, there’s absolutely no disputing that. But what also set her apart was her presence in the scene, not just in Laurel Canyon, but the grace she exhibited when observing and finding herself in the mirrors of others. Even something as scathing as saying Jim Morrison was a pointless addition to The Doors feels like it holds the weight of someone who knows what they’re talking about, radicalised only by bringing something to the table she didn’t always see or believe in herself.
Because that’s the thing, too: Ronstadt hates her own music. She can’t stand to listen to her own voice. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that she appeared just as innovative as some of the louder male names of her era, or the words of heartache and heartbreak that weren’t hers to begin with: she created her own space by reclaiming, becoming the best-selling female singer of the decade by staring adversity in the face and daring, for all the women who came before and those to follow, to bite back.
And while the numbers do all the talking, Ronstadt claiming the coveted title and reigning as one of the most influential female singers of all time, there’s also a lot to be said about how much she breathed new life into every song she sang. As Nicks said, there’s a reattachment there whenever you go back, and although Ronstadt only ever really did it once, the rawness and bravery were always there, speaking for all women (even today) facing the harsh claws of faceless strangers.
