Some reviews from the late '80s albums

[Partridge]

A review of For Sentimental Reasons, from Stereo Review, April 1987 issue




From Stereo Review, April 1988, a couple of reviews from country reviewer Alanna Nash




From CD Review, January 1990 issue

[RobGNYC]

I usually agree with Holly Gleason but not the part of her Cry Like a Rainstorm review where she says "It's as if she can't cut loose and fly free because she's got this entire orchestra behind her...." I hear just the opposite--it's because she has the orchestra behind her that she does of the strongest, least restricted (constricted?) singing of her career.
I recall Jerry Wexler saying that a big reason why Linda was uncomfortable during the “Keeping Out of Mischief” sessions (and shelved the album) was because she felt exposed with the minimal small-group arrangements compared with Nelson’s orchestral “cushion.”

[fabtastique]

Very wrong about CdmP !

[Partridge]

Even as a Ronstadt fan, I had little familiarity with this type of material, or the language, so I would have been unqualified to write an intelligent review of the Canciones album. I think some of the pop/rock critics should have refrained from reviewing an album that they consider a joke or a party record. Didn't the Rolling Stone reviewer use similar phrasing?

[Partridge]

On another note, the cheeky review of Dolly Parton's album was also a cheap shot. I hope the reviewer was paid by the number of words.

On the other hand, something I have thought about lately as I listened to a couple of Dolly albums-- has she ever recorded a good album? One you can listen to from start to finish like Heart Like a Wheel or Feels Like Home or Prisoner in Disguise or even Hand Sown... Home Grown? I Will Always Love You is a simple, touching, effective song. But most of Dolly's albums that I've heard are marred by her goofy songs of death and suicide. Although I did get a chuckle from Dolly's song Letter to Heaven, where the little girl wrote a letter to her dead mom in heaven, ran out to post the letter, got hit by a car, and was instantly transported to heaven to be with her mother.

Apologies to you Dolly fanatics!

[RobGNYC]

Jun 10, 2023 23:00:22 GMT -5 Partridge said:

Even as a Ronstadt fan, I had little familiarity with this type of material, or the language, so I would have been unqualified to write an intelligent review of the Canciones album. I think some of the pop/rock critics should have refrained from reviewing an album that they consider a joke or a party record. Didn't the Rolling Stone reviewer use similar phrasing?

Rolling Stone (David Browne, January 14, 1988, 2-star review) said:
“Depending on how seriously one takes Linda Ronstadt these days, “Canciones de Mi Padre” (“Songs of My Father”) is either a deeply felt homage to her family’s Mexican heritage or the party-gag album of the year.”

[erik]

Quote by RobGNYC:

Rolling Stone (David Browne, January 14, 1988, 2-star review) said:
“Depending on how seriously one takes Linda Ronstadt these days, “Canciones de Mi Padre” (“Songs of My Father”) is either a deeply felt homage to her family’s Mexican heritage or the party-gag album of the year.”

And if you read the rest of that review, it's even worse; in my opinion, it is close to borderline racism.

To be totally fair here, the critics aren't obligated to write praises of artists' albums 100% of the time, and that goes for Linda as well. But it does seem like Rolling Stone had it in for Linda for much of the 1980's, while proclaiming seemingly everything that U2 or Springsteen put out to be immortal.

What is a bit more shocking is the basic dismissal of Canciones by Alanna Nash, who Linda later became close friends with. That one was kind of extreme for her (IMHO).

As for Holly Gleason's assertion in her review of Cry Like A Rainstorm that Linda would probably make better pop records before all is said and done--well, in my humble opinion, Linda made two that match it in artistic terms: Winter Light and We Ran. Unfortunately, she never had anything approaching like Cry Like A Rainstorm's commercial success, pop or otherwise, on her last eleven albums.

[eddiejinnj]

Technically, in scientific terms, there are no such thing as different races biologically. Homo sapiens dna are so close there are no sub-species/different races. It is a cultural term and on top of that Hispanic (if that is an ok term) is not considered a race as there are Hispanics from Spain, Latin America, South America etc.
I think this is good news and people should focus on the fact that skin color has been an adaptation to climate and sun exposure. If anything the CDMP review is prejudice against a certain culturalism. It is a cheap shot review and should, imo, be dismissed as ignorant. All have a great week. eddiejinnj

[Partridge]

I found the Rolling Stone review of Canciones de mi Padre as I was going through my stash. These old magazines sure turn very brown over a period of 35 years.

This review was published in the January 14, 1988 issue of Rolling Stone.

[erik]

Now folks, if David Browne's Rolling Stone review isn't racist towards Canciones De Mi Padre, it is indisputably one of the most ignorant and bone-headed reviews that one could ever see with regards to anything that Linda did before or after it.

If anyone wants an alternate view, here's one I wrote (shameless self-promotion here) for Amazon in May 2012:

Erik North
4.0 out of 5 stars Once Upon A Time In The Southwest
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2012

In a career that saw her upping the ante for herself every time she made an album, even during the late 1970s when critics saw her music stultifying into a "formula", however successful she was, Linda Ronstadt upped the ante just a little bit more near the end of 1987, when the full weight of her Mexican-American upbringing in Arizona was bought out on CANCIONES DE MI PADRE, an album which paid homage to her father and his Mexican background. Having spent the mid-1980s doing opera, big-band standards, making the ultra-traditional country album TRIO with her good pals Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, and having a huge #2 hit early in 1987 with James Ingram ("Somewhere Out There"), one could have easily gotten a case of musical whiplash from all this musical eclecticism. And a lot of people in fact did.

CANCIONES, recorded with various mariachi ensembles, including Mariachi Vargas and Mariachi Los Camperos De Nati Cano, is Linda at perhaps her rawest, with all the songs being very traditional borderland rancheras and corridos that she heard as a youngster growing up in Tucson, which is after all only about an hour north of the Mexican border. With songs like "Por Un Amor", the boisterous "Y Andale" (which Linda does as a duet with her niece Mindy) and "La Charreada", and "Hay Unos Ojos", Linda is very much into her element as she was on her 1970s country-rock albums, which occasionally dropped hints of her background, as with "Lo Siento Mi Vida" and the Mexican influences of "Carmelita" and "Blue Bayou". The album definitely drips authenticity, which is something she learned in her childhood from her biggest influence, Lola Beltran, and which she has passed on to the great female singers (Emmylou; Trisha Yearwood; Tift Merritt; Caitlin Rose, etc.) who have followed her throughout the years.

Where Linda might be faulted on this album and its two successors (MAS CANCIONES; FRENESI), though, is that in sticking so slavishly to tradition, however honorable that might be, she falls victim to accusations of turning these songs that are so clearly vital to her and her life into frozen museum pieces, rather than updating them to reflect the connections between the past and the present. Also, if one isn't used to the mariachi/ranchera style of singing, as a lot aren't, one may occasionally find Linda's voice to be unusually loud; and if you're not terribly fluent in Spanish or in Mexican culture, the album itself as a whole can be a turn off. More than a few critics thought so when the album came out (Rolling Stone's critique of it was especially damning, arguably the worst review they or any publication ever gave to anything of Linda's).

Even so, CANCIONES DE MI PADRE did succeed on its own terms, and on Linda's as well, becoming the single most successful non-English album in history (an honor that it may very well still have a hold on even now), and validating, certainly in the most open-minded music listeners, the importance of a culture and ethnic group that seem to be so terribly targeted by the worst of bigots in America these days. It would have been even better had Linda done an album that mixed her Mexican, country, and rock influences together, with alternating English and Spanish-language songs; but with her retirement from performing and recording, that probably won't happen now. Still, Linda set a standard on this album. It remains a pivotal part of her time as perhaps the most influential female pop singer, Mexican-American or otherwise, of the last 50 years.