Art can and often does look vastly different to the observer and the creator, which is why someone as massively influential as Linda Ronstadt can say, unblinkingly, that they don’t think any of their albums are particularly good. We are our own worst critics, and musicians are certainly no exception. During a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Ronstadt went so far as to say that listening back to her old records is “horrifying.”
The multi-genre singer said she didn’t feel like she truly learned how to sing until around 1980, by which time she had already released ten albums. Of those records (and the ones that came after), Ronstadt said, “I don’t like any of them. But there are moments on some records that I like. The one with Nelson Riddle. The Trio records I did with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. I made a record with Ann Savoy, the Cajun singer, after I got Parkinson’s disease, and I could barely sing. I had to whisper everything. But that was a really successful record for us—artistically successful.”
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To a certain extent, Ronstadt’s disconnect from her discography is a natural consequence of the fact that she never identified wholly as a singer. “I always felt defined more by where I was from, who my parents were, who my family were, and how I interacted with them. Being a successful singer was only a fraction of it.”
Some Songs Are Better Left Unidentified With, Like This Duet With Frank Zappa
In some cases, a healthy separation between art and identity can be helpful. An identity built on an off-the-wall duet that Linda Ronstadt performed with Frank Zappa in the late 1960s, for example, might be a difficult persona to embody day-to-day. Per Zappa, the duet came on the heels of an award-winning jingle he wrote for Luden’s Cough Drops. After the success of the cough drop ad, razor manufacturer Remington reached out to Zappa to commission their own jingle. They gave the avant-garde rock ‘n’ roller a page of advertisement copy and told him to set it to music. Which he did. Technically.
The song itself sounds like something straight out of a fever dream—one where you think you woke up in your bedroom, just to find that you’re still very much in a dream state, and the inanimate objects therein have come to life and are singing hypnotic, disjointed melodies at you. The soprano voice singing this strange song is none other than Ronstadt, who shared a manager with Zappa, Herb Cohen. “They paid a thousand dollars for the demo,” Zappa later said. “That was the last I ever heard from ‘em. They didn’t like what I did.” Even without hearing it for yourself, Ronstadt’s description of their 1967 Remington Electric Razor jingle is enough explanation.
“It was so musically complicated,” Ronstadt told The Guardian. “I don’t know if they liked it. It was kind of like Bambi and Deep Throat on the same bill. It was not a likely pairing.”
Indeed, in those instances, perhaps it’s better to view one’s art from a safe distance, lest one’s career be boiled down to a zany electric razor advert from the late 1960s.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images