Following the dissolution of The Stone Poneys, it was time for Linda Ronstadt to embark on a solo career. She jumped right in, releasing her first two albums within a year of each other.
Both her solo debut, 1969’s Hand Sown…Home Grown, and its follow-up, 1970’s Silk Purse, followed a similar pattern. They were collections of dynamic folk and country covers with a few originals mixed in (though not Ronstadt originals… she almost never wrote her own songs).
It’s time for another of my favorite Meet Me in Montauk features: a deep dive! The latest honoree is Ms. Linda Ronstadt.
So far I’ve given the Deep Dive treatment to Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Madonna, Bob Marley, Lana Del Rey, The Rolling Stones, Jim Croce, Jason Isbell, and Dire Straits. That means I’ve listened to and written about every one of their studio albums.
I’ve also done a Shallow Dive of Barbra Streisand, in which I tackled ten of her most popular and/or acclaimed albums (she has 37, which made a full Deep Dive impractical).
A trio of holdovers topped the Billboard Hot 100 the week of June 7, 1986. They were, in order, Madonna’s ‘Live To Tell,’ Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald’s ‘On My Own,’ and Whitney Houston’s ‘Greatest Love of All.’
In the #4 slot is the first (and likely last) appearance on this blog by Nu Shooz, a husband-wife pop duo that had one big U.S. hit: ‘I Can’t Wait.’ This song is actually a synth-pop remix of the duo’s original R&B recording.
Throwing back to the week of June 6, 1976, we find Wings atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Silly Love Songs,’ the band’s third #1 song in the U.S. This was Paul McCartney’s 27th #1 hit in America as a songwriter, setting a record that he holds to this day (the number is now 32).
Written as a response to critics (and his old pal John Lennon) who called his music sappy, ‘Silly Love Songs’ leans unapologetically into the corn. And it paid off, spending five weeks atop the chart and becoming the #1 overall song of 1976. That made McCartney the first artist to have the #1 overall song with two different bands.
The final member of my list of the ’30 Greatest Living American Songwriters’ is in a category all his own. I guess you could call this my ‘Musical Theater’ section, but the truth is I don’t pay any attention to musical theater.
I do pay attention to Lin-Manuel Miranda, though. And he is one of the few living songwriters I will comfortably call a genius.
Meet Me In Montauk 