Review: The eighth studio album by American folk and country rock singer Linda Ronstadt, Simple Dreams was the best-selling album of her otherwise long career, and at the moment of its release in 1977 was also the second best-selling album by a female artist of all time, second only to Carole King’s Tapestry. From the upbeat ‘It's So Easy' to the poignant 'Blue Bayou’, the album seamlessly weaves Ronstadt’s trademark rock, country, and folk influences while saliently attending us to her gripping alto; her distinctive flutter was emblematic of the great American folk sound of the ‘40s onwards. Spanning everything from ballads to line dances, the album is most notably marked by the lonesome lament ‘I Will Never Marry’, on which Ronstadt imparts the extent of her dreams’ simplicity, and her strength: “I expect to live single all the days of my life."
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