Your three favourite songs of Linda

[moon]

Blue Train
What's new
Heart Like a wheel

[Mused]

OH Bruth...where art Thou?

obviously depends on my mood and state of mind!! and whats most familiar at the time!!ahhaha

Party Girl

Lush Life

Hurt So Bad

[Jimmy H.]

Can't narrow it to 3 but... Someone to Lay Down Beside Me / Faithless Love / Try Me Again , ect,ect, and many more.

[eddiejinnj]

Welcome to the forum all guests. I haven't tried this one because it's too difficult to pick just 3. Lots of great answers for me to think on. I am almost certain I would pick "Try Me Again" as it is a great power ballad and written by the greatest singer in the world. eddiejinnj

[cymru56]

Always:- Try Me Again and Heart Like A Wheel
3rd varies at present its The Moon's A Harsh Witness

[the Scribe]

I Can Almost See It
Lush Life
The Water Is Wide

[Dianna]

I really love this version... He Darked The Sun

[erik]

Three of my favorites from albums of Linda's 1990s period:

Winter Light
DON'T TALK (PUT YOUR HEAD ON MY SHOULDER)
A RIVER FOR HIM
ADONDE VOY

Feels Like Home
THE WAITING
WALK ON
THE BLUE TRAIN

We Ran
HEARTBREAK KIND
ICY BLUE HEART
WHEN WE RAN

[Dianna]

I guess nobody got my He Darked The Sun Eclipse joke. ha ha

[afgee108]

I Can't Help It (cos it's with Emmylou)
The Blue Train (cos it's the Trio)
Icy Blue Heart (cos I just love it!)

[Richard W]

I Can Almost See It: always a topper. There's an ineffable quality about this song's appeal I've always had a difficult time explaining. One thing that's not difficult to explain is Linda's voice, here in all its ripening '70s glory.

Skylark: just nails everything this song is about. IMO, this aces all other versions I've ever heard. Sterling arrangement by Riddle with unusual, haunting harmonica intro / outtro.

Third?: Depends. Right now I'm really appreciating and loving Sometimes You Just Can't Win. I just love when Linda sings a country lament (wish she'd done an album of them) and on this George Jones tune she just lets it fly. Plus J.D. Souther on harmony. Overlooked but significant song. You should hear what she does with it in that live radio broadcast from Dallas in 1982.

[erik]

Quote by Richard W:

Third?: Depends. Right now I'm really appreciating and loving Sometimes You Just Can't Win. I just love when Linda sings a country lament (wish she'd done an album of them) and on this George Jones tune she just lets it fly. Plus J.D. Souther on harmony. Overlooked but significant song. You should hear what she does with it in that live radio broadcast from Dallas in 1982.

Linda did know how to do such laments quite well, that's for sure. I always thought that a whole concept album of honky-tonk C&W/rock would have been a good idea.

And while I could be wrong about this, it does bring up what I think is a valid aspect about Linda that doesn't get talked about much--that the way she approached country music in her own style, due in no small part to when she did it (late 1960s/early 1970s) and where (Los Angeles), was...dare I say it?...radical. She was fairly naturalistic in the way she did these kinds of songs, a natural Western drawl in her voice pretty much negating having to put on a hammy Southern accent, and she knew how to make these kinds of songs, more than a few of which date from the early-to-mid 1950s, prime listening time for her as a young'un, relevant again to audiences that might otherwise not be caught dead listening to country music.

[Richard W]

Agree, Erik. Even on her most country tunes, Linda still sounds like no one else, then or now. Not just because of the uniqueness of her voice, but the way she sang. Perhaps, in a way I don't understand on a conscious level, it has to do with those signatures she's talked about, the Mexican signatures of the rhythm / phrasing. I don't know enough about the technical aspects of music to say, but there's something else going on.

As a tangent, this pickled southern drawl thing that all country artists have to affect now gets on my nerves. It's funny, but when you listen to old-school country, very few people sound as if they're south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Linda's southwestern accent is refreshing in comparison.

[LindaFanFive]

The examples where I hear an "accent" most are in a pair of songs that were recorded decades apart. "The Only Mama That'll Walk The Line" and "The Waiting." In those "Get" becomes "Git." I think sometimes she's hell bent on making sure things rhyme perfectly. So in "The Waiting" there's "Begin" and "Pretend" and the way she chose was to sing "Pretind" which kind of jumped out for me and sounded unusual for her. I adore "The Waiting" so it's an observation, not a criticism. She countrified (bluegrassed?) Tom Petty there and improved the song in my opinion.

[erik]

Quote by Richard W:

Agree, Erik. Even on her most country tunes, Linda still sounds like no one else, then or now. Not just because of the uniqueness of her voice, but the way she sang. Perhaps, in a way I don't understand on a conscious level, it has to do with those signatures she's talked about, the Mexican signatures of the rhythm / phrasing. I don't know enough about the technical aspects of music to say, but there's something else going on.

As a tangent, this pickled southern drawl thing that all country artists have to affect now gets on my nerves. It's funny, but when you listen to old-school country, very few people sound as if they're south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Linda's southwestern accent is refreshing in comparison.

I agree that the Mexican rhythm/phrasing influence is very important to Linda's phrasing, especially in terms of the way she cross-pollinates classic C&W and rock I don't know that there's any way for us to articulate it, though Linda herself probably could do it. Maybe it's what she once referred to as her "cactus throat" (Saguaro, naturally).

As to the pickled southern accents of so many of today's country artists...well, it beats me why they do it. If they're trying to gain redneck credibility or claim "authenticity" to country, it comes across as the most cynical grab play I can think of: The Voice meets Hee Haw, perhaps? One big example is Reba McEntire's hammy rendition of "Fancy", compared to the natural, sassy, intelligent original 1969 recording by Bobbie Gentry.

Linda at least has the natural catch in her voice that brings out the Southwestern drawl on songs like "Crazy Arms" or "I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You", which, as I said before, appeal to rock and roll fans who, perhaps up until she came along, wouldn't have been caught dead listening to this stuff.

[cescpa]

In keeping to the original question, if I had to limit the response to three, the list might look like this:

Tracks Of My Tears
Willin'
Alison

... but my love of her music is so great that a short list of three does not do her career/catalog justice, so the rest of my top 10 might look like this:

Get Closer
How Do I Make You
Poor Poor Pitiful Me
Ooh Baby Baby
Trouble Again
I Can't Let Go
You're No Good

... I absolutely love this alternate live take of Tracks Of My Tears

[More than 3]

Try Me Again
Willin' (live)
(others change weekly)
I Keep it Hid
I Can't Let Go
Party Girl(live)
and almost anything she sings in Spanish

[Richard W]

Love her live version of Party Girl from the HBO special. It cuts the studio version IMO. Dark and ominous with killer finale.