Lush Life
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Album Summary
Now here's an album that proves some artists just keep reaching higher — Linda Ronstadt's 'Lush Life' came through in 1984 on Asylum Records, and baby, it was something special. This was her second deep dive into the Great American Songbook alongside the legendary arranger and conductor Nelson Riddle, following the warmly received 'What's New' from 1983. With Peter Asher back in the producer's chair and Riddle conjuring those sweeping, silk-and-velvet orchestral arrangements, Ronstadt walked back into the studio and delivered something that felt both timeless and urgently alive. The sessions captured her wrapping her voice around classics from the standards canon — songs that had been waiting decades for a voice like hers to come along and breathe new fire into them. It was a bold move for a woman who had ruled the rock and country charts, and she made it look effortless.
Reception
- The album performed strongly on the Billboard 200, carrying forward the commercial momentum that 'What's New' had built and proving beyond any doubt that Ronstadt's audience trusted her wherever she chose to lead them.
- Critics came around with warm praise, highlighting her vocal discipline and the remarkable chemistry she had developed with Nelson Riddle's orchestrations, even as a few voices wondered whether the grand arrangements left full room for her more instinctive interpretive side.
- The album earned Grammy recognition, cementing the artistic credibility of Ronstadt's standards work and establishing her as a genuinely serious voice in the tradition of classic American vocal music.
Significance
- Released years before the broader pop-world rediscovery of the Great American Songbook became fashionable, 'Lush Life' was ahead of its time — a mainstream artist making the case, with real conviction and real results, that these songs still had something profound to say to contemporary ears.
- The album carries deep historical gravity as one of the final major recording projects of Nelson Riddle, the great arranger who had shaped the sound of Sinatra, Nat Cole, and so many others — his death in 1985 makes these sessions a treasured document of a master in his final chapter.
- By fully committing to a jazz and standards-oriented sound across multiple albums, Ronstadt dismantled industry assumptions about genre loyalty for pop and rock artists, opening a door that many would later walk through but that she was among the very first to push open.
Tracklist
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A1 When I Fall In Love —
2:20
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A2 Skylark —
3:07
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A3 It Never Entered My Mind —
4:22
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A4 Mean To Me —
4:09
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A5 When Your Lover Has Gone —
4:18
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A6 I'm A Fool To Want You —
4:45
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B1 You Took Advantage Of Me 140
2:21
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B2 Sophisticated Lady 127
3:40
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B3 Can't We Be Friends 126
2:28
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B4 My Old Flame 63
3:23
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B5 Falling In Love Again 142
2:35
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B6 Lush Life 83
3:51
Artist Details
Linda Ronstadt is a stone-cold legend, a powerhouse vocalist out of Tucson, Arizona who burst onto the scene in the late 1960s and absolutely owned the 1970s with a sound that could slide effortlessly from country-rock to pop to straight-up blue-eyed soul — the kind of voice that made you pull your car over and just *listen*. She bridged the gap between the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter scene and mainstream radio gold, racking up hits like You're No Good and Blue Bayou while producing some of the best-selling albums of the entire decade, and in doing so she became one of the first women in rock to truly command the industry on her own terms. Her influence stretches wide and deep, paving the way for a generation of female artists who dared to be both commercially successful and artistically fearless, and her legacy stands as a testament to what happens when raw talent meets absolute determination.
