Credit: Far Out / Linda Ronstadt
Sun 16 August 2026 19:30, UK
Linda Ronstadt was always looking for the quality of a singer before anything else when she turned on the radio.
The pop culture landscape has changed a lot since she first began writing songs, but she knew that there was a lot more than the world had to offer than simply playing the same old tunes exactly the right way. She knew that there was a lot more that she was capable of, but she realised that sometimes artists needed a bit more than just great tunes and a great delivery to get anywhere in the industry.
But in the Laurel Canyon rock scene that Ronstadt came out of, she didn’t really have to worry about such things. She knew that there was nothing better than singing in the bars in Los Angeles and showing the world what great vocals were supposed to sound like, but there were also more than a few times when she felt like she didn’t exactly belong in the same world of rock and roll that everyone else did.
Which is probably why she ended up becoming so endeared to what Billy Joel was doing when he was writing ‘Just the Way You Are’. Joel’s music wasn’t necessarily meant to be cool when looking at the other great musicians out at the time, but Ronstadt didn’t care about the cool factor of anything. Her ears were attuned to the songs before anything else, but when she reached the 1980s, it was as if her time as a singer was going to need to go through a few switch-ups.
She was already itching to move outside of her comfort zone when making a turn to Broadway, but there was also a feeling that caused her to move outside of the traditional rock and roll formula. She didn’t want to be singing tunes like ‘You’re No Good’ for the rest of her life, and when she began working with people like Nelson Riddle, she had started singing the kinds of tunes that felt right at home in her vocal range, even if they weren’t going to get on the charts nearly as much.
It was definitely different from what everyone expected, but how the hell was she going to be able to adapt to the 1980s? She detested doing television appearances, so there was no way for her to pull off the same kind of music that Madonna was doing whenever she released one of her videos. She felt that Madonna was a great talent in terms of being an entertainer, but even when she ended up reaching the 1990s, she felt that people like Celine Dion didn’t deserve to get lost in the lurch.
Dion did eventually get her flowers from working on Titanic and making one of the greatest love songs of all time, but Ronstadt always knew that people would end up catering to Madonna a lot easier than they did to Dion, saying, “I mean the culture is giving a lot of support to people who are entertainers, but who are… entertainers more, like Madonna, she’s more an entertainer than she’s a singer. She’s a singer, Celine Dion, but… so what? She’s a good singer, she’s got a beautiful voice, you can’t fault her. But see that’s the culture. … And their sensibility too. But Celine Dion is a voice. Madonna’s not much of a singer but she’s a stylist.”
Further reading: From The Vault
At the same time, it’s not like Dion hasn’t had her own influence over the culture. There have been a million people trying to copy the same kind of formula that Madonna worked with when she first started, but the reason why there has been no one to take Dion’s place is that no one can match that specific musical weight that she carried herself with every single time she launched into one of her tunes.
It’s the same reason why someone sees the difference between someone like Billie Eilish and Adele now. Both of them are great at what they do, but as much as people were itching to copy Eilish every single time they made one of their own records, trying to capture Adele’s energy now doesn’t make any sense. She’s one-of-a-kind, just like Dion was, and no one else was going to slow her down from becoming one of the biggest names in music.
