Editing Linda Ronstadt (section)

==== Interpretive singer ====
Ronstadt is considered an "interpreter of her times",<ref name="interpreter4">{{Cite news |last=Varga |first=George |date=November 21, 2004 |title=A 'song interpreter' for her times: Linda Ronstadt is ready to give jazz another whirl |work=U-T San Diego |url=http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20041121-9999-1a21linda.html |url-status=live |access-date=August 1, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081225022959/http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20041121-9999-1a21linda.html |archive-date=December 25, 2008}}</ref> and has earned praise for her courage to put her "stamp" on many of her songs.<ref name="DeanofRock">{{Cite web |title='Courageous' singer plunges back into pop-music mainstream |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3975133.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121106074443/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3975133.html |archive-date=November 6, 2012 |access-date=April 6, 2008 |website=Chicago Sun-Times}}</ref> Ronstadt herself has indicated that some of her 1970s hits were recorded under considerable pressure to create commercially successful recordings, and that she prefers many of her songs that were non-hit album tracks.<ref name=MIXMag2000 /> An infrequent songwriter, Ronstadt co-composed only three songs over her long career.

Ronstadt's natural vocal range spans several octaves from [[contralto]] to [[soprano]], and occasionally she will showcase this entire range within a single work. Ronstadt was the first female artist in popular music history to accumulate four consecutive platinum albums (fourteen certified million selling, to date). As for the singles, ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' pointed out that a whole generation, "but for her, might never have heard the work of artists such as [[Buddy Holly]], [[Elvis Costello]], and [[Chuck Berry]]."<ref name="interpreter6">{{Cite magazine |title=Artists: Linda Ronstadt Bio, Pictures, Video |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/linda-ronstadt/biography |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171202022453/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/linda-ronstadt/biography |archive-date=December 2, 2017 |access-date=November 24, 2012 |magazine=Rolling Stone}}</ref>

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| quote=Music is meant to lighten your load. By singing it ... you release (the sadness). And release yourself ... an exercise in exorcism.&nbsp;... You exorcise that emotion ... and diminish sadness and feel joy.|source=—Linda Ronstadt<ref>{{Cite web |date=April 1, 1988 |title=Linda Ronstadt's New Old Flame- Mexican Music 1. "I'm Not Good at Doing What I'm Told" |url=http://www.ronstadt-linda.com/artamway.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509065446/http://www.ronstadt-linda.com/artamway.htm |archive-date=May 9, 2008 |access-date=July 31, 2008 |website=American Way}}</ref>}}

Others have argued that Ronstadt had the same generational effect with her Great American Songbook music, exposing a whole new generation to the music of the 1920s and 1930s{{snds}}music which was pushed aside because of the advent of rock 'n' roll. When interpreting, Ronstadt said she "sticks to what the music demands", in terms of lyrics.<ref name="Demands1">{{Cite web |last=Caffery |first=Joshua Clegg |date=July 26, 2006 |title=Songbird Sisters: South Louisiana's Ann Savoy teams up with pop icon Linda Ronstadt for their new CD, Adieu False Heart |url=http://www.theind.com/cover2.asp?CID=-1710469275 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928000105/http://www.theind.com/cover2.asp?CID=-1710469275 |archive-date=September 28, 2007 |access-date=May 13, 2007 |website=The Independent Weekly}}</ref> Explaining that rock and roll music is part of her culture, she says that the songs she sang after her rock and roll hits were part of her soul. "The (Mariachi music) was my father's side of the soul," she was quoted as saying in a 1998 interview she gave at her Tucson home. "My mother's side of my soul was the Nelson Riddle stuff. And I had to do them both to reestablish who I was."<ref name="hersoul">{{Cite web |title=Everlasting Linda (Interview 17 June 1998 in Tucson, AZ) |url=http://www.debbiekruger.com/writer/freelance/ronstadt_transcript.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928113552/http://www.debbiekruger.com/writer/freelance/ronstadt_transcript.html |archive-date=September 28, 2007 |access-date=July 6, 2007 |website=Linda Ronstadt}}</ref>

In the 1974 book ''Rock 'N' Roll Woman'', author Katherine Orloff writes that Ronstadt's "own musical preferences run strongly to rhythm and blues, the type of music she most frequently chooses to listen to ... (and) her goal is to ... be soulful too. With this in mind, Ronstadt fuses country and rock into a special union."<ref name="Soulful" />

By this stage of her career, Ronstadt had established her niche in the field of country-rock. Along with other musicians such as [[the Flying Burrito Brothers]], [[Emmylou Harris]], [[Gram Parsons]], [[Swampwater]], Neil Young, and the Eagles, she helped free country music from stereotypes and showed rockers that country was okay. However, she stated that she was being pushed hard into singing more rock and roll.<ref name=goldmine />