From Elton John to Diana Ross to Stevie Wonder, many of the biggest solo acts of the 1970s lost steam by the time the ‘80s began. To her credit, Linda Ronstadt kept rolling right into the new decade with the Platinum-certified Mad Love. She, too, would soon hit a speed bump, at least commercially. While other ‘70s artists pivoted towards new wave or the ‘80s brand of slick pop to regain relevance, Ronstadt took her career in a more nostalgic direction with What’s New.
Not everyone was happy with her decision to eschew rock for an album of traditional standards, but What’s New became one of the biggest albums of Ronstadt’s career. With little to no help from rock and Top-40 stations, What’s New held its own on the charts against powerhouse albums like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down, The Police’s Synchronicity, Yes’ 90125, and Billy Joel’s An Innocent Man. The album’s success is not only a tale of how a ‘70s icon authored one of the most unusual comeback stories in pop music history, but also a lesson about the value of following one’s own vision.
The End of Ronstadt’s Rock-Star Run
Ronstadt finished up the ‘70s with a pair of No. 1 multi-Platinum albums, Simple Dreams and Living in the USA. On her first ‘80s album, Mad Love, Ronstadt made a somewhat predictable move toward new wave, and in doing so, she increased her streak of consecutive Platinum studio albums to six. It was also her third album to sport a pair of Top-10 singles, with “How Do I Make You” and “Hurt So Bad” reaching the upper echelon of the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1980.
Shortly after releasing Mad Love, Ronstadt started to plot another change in course—one that would take her away from rock altogether. After listening to a record by 1930s jazz singer Mildred Bailey, whom Ronstadt called “a sexy Snow White” in a Time magazine interview, she first considered the idea of recording an album of standards. Ronstadt did more than just think about it. Around the same time she starred in the Broadway production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, Ronstadt recorded an album of pop standards with producer Jerry Wexler to be titled Keeping Out of Mischief. However, she was unhappy with the final product and shelved it.
When Ronstadt returned to the studio in late 1981, the result was a more conventional pop-rock album, Get Closer. It only reached No. 31 on the Billboard 200, and its highest-charting single—the title track—peaked at No. 29. By the time she made Get Closer, Ronstadt was already getting tired of being a rock star. Or more accurately, as she told the New Yorker, “Part of me was very tired of it. I was singing loud in halls that didn’t sound like they were built for music.”
A Risky Move
In 1982, Ronstadt embarked on a second attempt to record an album of traditional pop standards. This time, she would collaborate with orchestral arranger Nelson Riddle, who established himself in the ‘50s and ‘60s through his work with Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and many others. Ronstadt’s manager Peter Asher, who had produced each of her eight previous studio albums, was at the helm for What’s New, though even he had doubts about her new direction. He told Time, “I had mixed feelings about how the record would sell, but not about whether she would do it well.”
Joe Smith, the head of Elektra Records, had even greater concerns about his label’s star performer. In her New Yorker interview, Ronstadt noted Smith “came to my house to beg me not to do it. He said, ‘You’re throwing your career away.’” She persisted in making the album, and Smith came around to supporting the idea. What’s New hit record store shelves in September 1983, and the initial response was underwhelming. It debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 93 just under a year after Get Closer entered the chart at No. 72.
A Career-Changing Album
It didn’t take What’s New long to turn the tide. Four weeks after its chart debut, it reached the Top 10, and it did so without the benefit of a Top-40 single. What’s New spent a total of 80 weeks on the Billboard 200, making it Ronstadt’s longest-charting studio album. It spent five consecutive weeks at No. 3, held back from the top spots by Thriller and Can’t Slow Down in each week. While the title track topped out at No. 53 on the Hot 100, it became one of Ronstadt’s most popular songs on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, peaking at No. 5.
Ronstadt would go on to make two more albums of standards with Riddle, Lush Life and For Sentimental Reasons. (Riddle would die prior to the completion of the latter album in 1985.) Those albums failed to generate a pop hit, and when Ronstadt returned to the Top 40 in the latter half of the ‘80s, it was with a trio of ballad duets. “Somewhere Out There” (with James Ingram), “Don’t Know Much,” and “All My Life” (both with Aaron Neville) would be her last songs to register on the Top 40.
If one were only to listen to rock stations in the ‘80s, it would have been easy to get the impression that Ronstadt fell off the map in that decade. To the contrary, she released seven Platinum or multi-Platinum albums in the ‘80s, including Canciones de Mi Padre—a collection of Mariachi songs—and Trio, which was a collaborative effort with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. There was no reason for Ronstadt to fear the change in direction she pursued with What’s New. If anything, it emboldened her to record the albums she wanted to make, even if they were out of step with her previous work—or with the popular music trends of the day.
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Photo by Gary Gershoff/Getty Images
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