My wife grew up with her parent's copy of Simple Dreams (which is now part of my collection) so why choose Mad Love for my rambling thoughts?
Simple.
I wanted to, and it seemed like a good idea. Besides, over this past year I have managed to find an astonishing number of her albums in the dollar bin, and it has been an absolute joy listening to them for the first time and discovering an artist I knew only from the killer guitar solo from "You're no Good" - from there it led to me getting albums by Andrew Gold and Karla Bonoff.
It's weird looking back now and realizing that in 1980 Linda was still only in her early 30s and had been releasing albums for over a decade. A decade in kid years from a developmental perspective is kind of like measuring things in dog years. In other words when she released Mad Love she had been around FOR-EVVVVVER. Of course looking at it now, it was a blink of an eye.
When I saw this one in the bin I scanned the back cover, which had seen some water apparently, I didn't recognize the titles, but after getting it home and giving it a clean I popped it on, and right out of the gate this was starting off really strong. Reading through the credits there were still some familiar faces, but there seemed to be new crop of writers and players.
Linda recorded three songs by Elvis Costello, who back in 1979 was still that nerdy new wave guy who wasn't yet an elder statesmen. They're very good songs. Musically there's a sense of change in the air. The songs are a bit more new wave without taking away from being Linda Ronstadt (yea, I think of her as her own genre) and you get the sense that she's aware that changes are afoot in music, and while she's riding the wave there's a sense that she'll just do her own thing and pick and choose what she wants to incorporate into her musical zeitgeist (I think I used that correctly). Which makes it so cool to hear songs like "I Can't Let Go" and "Hurts So Bad" that were written in 1965. Yeah, I had to check on that as I would never have guessed.
Looking back now on her music, I find it kind of strange this wasn't more on my radar. Then again, my teenage rock and roll brain was perhaps a bit misogynistic and I had very little in the way of female fronted rock albums. Sure I liked song songs by Heart, and Pat Benatar but when I thought rock and roll I didn't think of girls. Heck, I'll admit I was close to getting The Runaways when they came out though, that shit rocked - but I probably opted for a Thin Lizzy record, I think it was Jail Break.
Throughout her career Linda Ronstadt managed to carve out a path that was about the music. She wasn't limited to a specific genre or style and she'd often vary in tone between albums. There was a crunch to her music that allowed her to cross musical boundaries and be embraced by both camps. None of this would have been possible with the voice - she could snarl, purr and caress a note that set her in a league of her own.
After spinning the Mad Love a couple of times while writing this, I can provide a better answer to why I chose to write about this one: There are no bad Linda Ronstadt albums, just points in time where you become a fan. While it's true I didn't become a fan with this album, I was a fan who bought this one and it was worth far more than the dollar I had to pay.
If you have the chance to watch the documentary The Sound of My Voice, released in 2019 it will be time well spent.
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