{"id":1123292,"date":"2026-08-01T02:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T02:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1123292\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T02:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T02:28:19","slug":"the-best-writer-linda-ronstadt-knew-always-got-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1123292\/","title":{"rendered":"The “best” writer Linda Ronstadt knew always got better"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Linda<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Linda Ronstadt<\/p>\n

Sat 1 August 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n

Linda Ronstadt<\/a> didn\u2019t ever need to consider herself a songwriter before anything else. <\/p>\n

She was more than happy to have some of her colleagues finish off her songs for her whenever she made a record, and while she didn\u2019t have to write every single word, she was like a sonic actor every single time she interpreted one of her favourite songs. Not every song was suited to her voice in retrospect, but she did understand that some musicians were just naturally gifted with the skills of a masterful storyteller.<\/p>\n

Then again, being a storyteller isn\u2019t the kind of thing that just happens overnight. Some of the biggest acts of all time, like Bob Dylan, usually have to take a few years before they\u2019re fully ready to give their songs to the world, but then there are song craftsmen who are more interested in how their songs sound on an acoustic guitar than how many people are going to sing along to the tune whenever they perform live.<\/p>\n

And while Ronstadt\u2019s friends weren\u2019t always their best cheerleaders, she was going to champion the great writers who were working around that time. She was shocked that someone like Jackson Browne could speak so candidly about affairs of the heart for such a young kid, and even though her voice wasn\u2019t always going to do justice to Randy Newman\u2019s songs<\/a>, she had no problem putting him on the same level as Dylan in terms of his storytelling abilities and snide sense of humour.<\/p>\n

Both Browne and Newman were always going to be on the fringes of rock and roll history, but there were also more than a few times when people wanted to stay in the background. Carole King had no intention of becoming a superstar when she first began singing with Gerry Goffin for the first time, and for as much as Jimmy Webb wrote fantastic songs, he was far more willing to give his tunes away to other people now and again.<\/p>\n

\u2018Wichita Lineman\u2019 is still one of the finest songs<\/a> anyone has ever made, and Ronstadt was more than happy to talk about some of Webb\u2019s tunes whenever he came out with them. But as she kept listening over time, she started to realise that he was much more nuanced in his delivery whenever he played any of his tunes as he grew older. His music aged like a fine wine, and there was no one else who could really say that in his field.<\/p>\n

Many songwriters have to change as they get older, but even in the late 1990s, Ronstadt considered Webb to still be at the top of his game, saying<\/a>, \u201cThat was one of the things that was wrong with Feels Like Home is that I didn\u2019t have one of Jimmy\u2019s songs on, I tried to get one on. I think he calls it \u2018Breath After Breath\u2019 or he calls it \u2018Is There Love After You\u2019. It\u2019s a great song, it\u2019s as good as Jimmy\u2019s ever written. Isn\u2019t he a great storyteller? It\u2019s just like having him in the living room, it really is. He kills me. Jimmy\u2019s just the best. The best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not all of the melodies had to be completely groundbreaking or anything like that, but a lot of what made Webb so unique was the way that he presented so many of his songs. Every one of them had the same kind of structure that everyone was used to, but given how simplistic everything was, it almost felt like you were hearing this style of song for the first time whenever Webb was writing them.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the true art behind any good songwriter. It\u2019s incredibly difficult to have anything that could be considered new in the rock and roll world these days, but sometimes it takes the right songwriter to put that little variation on everything and completely change the way that you look at one of their tracks. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Linda Ronstadt Sat 1 August 2026 1:00, UK Linda Ronstadt didn\u2019t ever need to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[191985,77,283278,292784,53060,269,16,15],"class_list":["post-1123292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1990s","tag-entertainment","tag-folk-rock","tag-jimmy-webb","tag-linda-ronstadt","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117017898633101213","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1123292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1123292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1123292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1123292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}