Perfect Pop Songs

There really needs to be a special space for Ronstadt, who was cute and sexy and whose voice was an amazing instrument. She didn't write songs and wasn't part of a band that did. She interpreted other people's songs and in general made them much better. Look at "Blue Bayou". Roy Obison did a marvelous job with it, it was a big hit for him and very suited to his remarkable voice. Ronstadt got hold of it, updated it with yet another group of studio musicians, The Section, the 70's and later version of the Wrecking Crew. Lee Sklar on bass, Ross Kunkle on drums, Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar on guitars along with Waddy Wachtel, Craig Doerge on keyboards were the de facto Asylum Records house band, both in the studio and on the road acting as James Taylor's, Jackson Brown's, Stevie Nicks', Warren Zevon's and Ronstadt's band among many others.

Pure pop perfection, covering a song that was excellent to start with and somehow making it better.

Live. No retakes, no overdubs. Gorgeous.

Live, straight off the sound board. Again, no autotune, no overdubs, live and without a net. This one is from the movie "FM". Waddy Wachtel on the lead guitar.

I know that it's another era, but while she was cute and played it up, Ronstadt didn't need to be half naked, or dancing seductively with a dozen other dancers and a big elaborate light show. She just walked out on the stage and delivered the goods.

 

Speaking of remarkable instruments and Roy Orbison, "The Voice" has several songs that belong here. He was the opposite of a teen idol, kinda ugly with bottle-bottom glasses, but his voice simply could not be denied. Very few people had the chops to even consider covering him. Here's one who did an amazing job with the obvious approval of the man himself.

Talk about respected, look at who is on this stage backing Roy up. At a glance, Springsteen, James Burton, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, and more.

 

Her most under-appreciated album is "Mad Love." I think it's outstanding. Other's mileage may vary.

 

And Dave has dozens more as well.

 

This is always the first choice for perfect Matthew Sweet pop songs.

 

This thread will be a few thousand pages long soon.

 

I'm going to push an old personal favorite album, and many of y'all will have never heard it. "Absolute Torch and Twang" by k.d. lang and the Reclines. The band's name was a hat tip to lang's sounding similar to Patsy Cline (the Re-Clines, get it?). Here's a country album from a group from Canada that no one had heard of, fronted by a lesbian (she wasn't fully out, but it wasn't any big secret either) that earned lang the Country Female Vocal Grammy in 1990. How good did she have to be to do that thirty years ago? Country music wasn't exactly embracing LGBT rights then.

Here she is covering a great old Willie Nelson song, and you'll see why she got it.

 

I hope so, although at this point I'd settle for being able to pry myself out of it once in a while.

 

I saw a documentary on CNN several months ago (although my concept of time may be way off ... who knows these days?) about Linda Ronstadt's career and her battle with a degenerative disease that's taken away her ability to sing. It was fabulous. I'll just post the trailer here, but the film was spectacular. My god, what a voice.

 

k.d. lang is a massive talent, incredible voice. This is a fucking banger from her major-label debut: