Linda Ronstadt names the artist who invented pop music

(Credits: Far Out / Rob Bogaerts / Anefo)

Thu 17 October 2024 20:01, UK

There’s no real turning point for when people started using the word ‘pop music’. Although the advent of rock and roll made music slightly more interesting than the records that someone put on at a dinner party, it takes more than one genre to turn the entire music world on its head. But maybe it wasn’t about a genre of music at all. It was about the people, and as far as Linda Ronstadt was concerned, she knew that this jazz crooner had everything that someone was looking for in a pop star.

When listening through Ronstadt’s discography, though, she seemed born and bred in the country tradition rather than having anything to do with traditional pop. She was still indebted to rock and rollers like Buddy Holly and Little Richard, but the power behind her voice was as if Janis Joplin had crossed with Loretta Lynn in some spots, especially when she let loose on tunes like ‘You’re No Good’.

But Ronstadt was about more than the tone of her voice. It was about living within the confines of the song, and that kind of tradition stretched back well before the times of rock and roll. That was the kind of music that jazz musicians built off of, and no one had a voice as pure as Billie Holiday whenever she sang.

Although her voice sounds much softer these days, she turned jazz into its own distinct medium for the charts. People like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra had a jazzy angle to work off of on their famous tunes, but hearing Holiday sing ‘Strange Fruit’ sounds like she has teardrops in her voice as she’s singing.

Beyond being a pop singer, though, Holiday taught us that music could mean something more than a tune to throw on in the background. It was about making something that could hold up a mirror to society, and while ‘Strange Fruit’ has been used as background music by many, it’s easy to forget the social unrest that’s buried underneath all of those chords.

For all of the country tunes that Ronstadt could get away with, she felt that Holiday was the blueprint for what most people could work off of for pop stars, saying, “My dad bought lots of records home. I remember being enchanted by Billie Holiday. She invented pop music and the things we all later did. She made music so intimate. She and Frank Sinatra are the two biggest influences on popular singing in the 20th century. I tried to do what they did.”

It’s not exactly a one-to-one comparison or anything, but when Ronstadt does deliver her material, she seems to live every second of the tune in real time. Just like Holiday was crying in her best tunes, there’s no one doubting that Ronstadt did have her broken on more than a few occasions when she tears through her ballads or has had to deal with someone who’s been running for too long on her cover of the Eagles’ ‘Desperado’.

Because, in a way, what Ronstadt and Holiday do is more akin to acting than it is to strictly singing. Most people can’t relate to someone absent-mindedly singing a tune, but if you deliver a tune in precisely the right way, there’s a rapport developed between the singer and the audience that’s impossible to replace.

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