Were all of Linda Rondstadt's big hits covers? Does she has ANY original big hits?

Because the real treasures and showcases for her talent were her albums....thats why she had a string of platinum and multi platinum albums over decades.

R1 yeah but I would think once she had 1-2 hit albums, songwriters would have lined up to write original material for her.

Every other successful female singer of the last 50 years has at least a few original hits except Linda. It's odd

And so does she....to claim otherwise is to show ignorance

ex: Different Drum (#13 in 1967) Long Long Time (#25 in 1970) How Do I Make You (#10 in 1980) Get Closer (#29 in 1982) Somewhere Out There (#2 in 1987)

Lots of great artists cover other songs and it happened a lot more in the 60s 70s and 80s. Cyndi Lauper covered boat time after time and all through the night. Listen to the originals and they are so far away from what Cyndi and her producers did that it is truly astounding. Also Barry Manilow‘s hits were about 50% covers. Mandy was originally called Brandy. He was basically forced to do a version of it by Clive Davis and then came up with something pretty fucking memorable. If you listen to the original song ships and then listen to Barry Manilow’s version of it, You can get an appreciation for Barry Manilow’s success as a producer and talent arranging pieces of music. Whether he is to your taste or not is a separate issue, but even the original singer songwriter of ships was blown away. Manilow‘s success as nothing to do with him as a singer, even he knows his voice isn’t spectacular, it’s his producing and ability to find melodies and pump them up in the arrangements

Linda Ronstadt was famous for showcasing songwriters...Karla Bonoff, Warren Zevon, etc...on her albums...they didnt need to be "hits"...just good songs.

Sorry, I meant that Cindy Lauper covered all through the night and girls just wanna have fun

R3 only 2 of those were top 10. So just 2 of her 10 top 10 hits were originals and only 5 total original hits of her top 30 success just weird

she should have had more original material

What part of ALBUM do you not understand ?....he albums werent massive sellers because of a few hit remakes...her albums showcased her talent and are the real treasures...listen to a few...you might enjoy it and come to realize that if anything, she is under appreciated. The reason for that is Linda Ronstadt herself...she was a singer...not a famewhore.

Great song, sung well.

R8 not saying that. No reason to get offended

but when people think of singers, they think of their signature songs not random album songs that weren't singles. I just wish someone like Ronstadt had had more original big hits.

[quote] And so does she....to claim otherwise is to show ignorance

Who are you responding to?

You can't be responding to r2, because "Different Drum" was a cover of a song Mike Nesmith wrote that the Greenbriar Boys first recorded.

Here’s Warren Zevon’s version.

She sings:

“I met a man out in Hollywood...”

He sings:

“I met a girl in West Hollywood...”

Does the reference to West Hollywood mean anything?

Oh, OP, this is a great question. After recently seeing a documentary about Linda Ronstadt called THE SOUND OF MY VOICE, I started to wonder that same thing.

Even the songs on GET CLOSER seem to be covers. Everything from WHAT"S NEW are covers of 1940 big band music.

Didn't Cyndi Lauper write TIME AFTER TIME?

Agree with R7 and R2, all of Linda's "signature songs" are covers.

Maybe the one with Aaron Neville and the song about the mouse weren't covers, but the majority of her hits and "signature songs" have been covers.

Linda was friends with Warren Zevon, Tom Petty, and Jackson Brown.

I don’t get the fascination with her.

It’s not a flaw, OP. Ronstadt and her producer, Peter Asher, were collectors of classic material, who put together albums that showed off Ronstadt’s remarkable range as an interpreter. Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald worked in a similar way: their great albums concentrated on songs that were already classics, material that was worthy of their talent.

The songs that Ronstadt covered were usually not well-known in their first version. So that they were covers does not mean anything.

Unless someone is a singer songwriter, a large part of their work will be covers--and often better known than the one's that Ronstadt covered.

Every ten years from the 70s on there is another recording of I Will Always Love You. Most of Bowie's later hits were covers of songs originally sung by Iggy Pop (okay co-written with Bowie). Diane Krull and Blossom Dearie may not be pop, but no one bitches that they do not do new songs.

Ronstadt never even tried to write a song, so her songs, essentially, were all covers. She was a huge embracer of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter community, and often recorded songs that sprung from them. Most of her hits, though, were more well known Motown and pop covers, but there was a great breadth of what she recorded.

Love her

I thought that poor poor pitiful me was written for her, by Zevon, who later recorded it, no?

In poor, poor, pitiful me, the lyrics are:

“Well I met a boy in the Vieux Carres Down in Yokohama. He picked me up and he threw me down. He said "Please don't hurt me Mama."

Vieux Carres means “old square” in French, and refers to the French Quarter in New Orleans. Yokohama is a Japanese island. So what does this refer to?

[quote]Ronstadt never even tried to write a song,

She wrote at least three.

Try Me Again

Lo Siento Mi Vida

Winter Light

She didn't pursue it any further because she didn't think she was very good at it, and she was embarrassed to sing a song like Try Me Again in concert because it was too personal.

Interesting, R24. I wasn't aware that she wrote any songs at all. As for Poor Poor Pitiful Me: Zevon recorded it long before Linda did.

Argh, I meant to add that the original lyrics of Poor Poor Pitiful me don't have that Yokohama verse. The original verse is "I met a girl at the rainbow bar/She asked me if I'd beat her/And she took me back to the Hyatt house/I don't want to talk about it." It is no wonder Ronstadt changed the verse, and it could have just been nonsense rhymes she spewed on the fly.

She is a vocalist, an interpreter. She loved to sing and loved to sing other people's songs. And she did a great job covering them.

I credit Linda Ronstadt for opening up my musical tastes as I had never heard of Karla Bonoff, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, Jimmy Webb or Warren Zevon until I heard Linda cover their songs. I became familiar with a terrific group called The Cretones because Linda covered some of their songs on Mad Love (as well as Elvis Costello - I became a fan of his after hearing Linda doing some of his songs on Mad Love).

I still prefer Linda's version of Desperado over the Eagles.

"Don't Know Much" was actually a cover of a song that Bette Midler sang

She Said in an interview once that the reason why she does covers is because she’s not a songwriter. She said once upon a time there were singers and they were song writers the singer sang at the songwriters wrote. But that’s pretty much gone. She said the song writers want to be famous they want the money and all the glory of being a star so they perform their own material. And who can blame them? But that means she said that someone like her who can sing I can’t write hast to make a career in singing covers written by Artist who performed their own material

R27 . All I Need to Know was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who wrote, among other hits, You've Lost That Loving Feeling, On Broadway, You're My Heart and Soul Inspiration, I Just Can't Help Believing, etc. They were contemporaries of Carole King -- and are featured characters in the play Beautifl -- and their catalogue is extraordinary. I prefer their songs to King's.

Oh, I got some clarification. The lyrics are:

“Well, I met a girl from the Vieux Carre, down in Yokohama...”

So, that can make sense. She’s from somewhere, and they met down in Yokohama. Phew, God forbid a song lyric made no sense!

In any event, I am drawn to keep replaying her rendition of “Poor, poor, pitiful me.” She’s magnificent!

I love and have always loved her version of "Desparado". I always go back to that song as the years go by.