SIMPLE DREAMS
Simple Dreams is the eighth studio album by the American rock singer-songwriter Linda Ronstadt, released by Asylum Records. One of the most successful albums of Ronstadt’s career, Simple Dreams spent five successive weeks at number 1 on the Billboard album chart in late 1977, displacing Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours after it had held that position for a record-breaking 29 weeks. It also knocked Elvis Presley out of the number 1 position on the Billboard Country Albums chart after “The King” had held it for fifteen consecutive weeks following his death in August. It won the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package and was nominated for several other Grammy awards. Simple Dreams was Ronstadt’s fifth consecutive million-selling platinum album and sold over 3½ million copies in less than a year in the United States alone — a record for a female artist. Among female recording artists at that time, only Carole King, with her album Tapestry, had sold more copies of an album. This album has never been out of print. (More from Wikipedia)
When Linda Ronstadt released her version of the Rolling Stones song “Tumbling Dice” (she and Mick Jagger dated for a while), I was reminded again of how masterful the Jagger/Richards team was at crafting song lyrics. The song is included on her 1977 album Simple Dreams; Linda had to noticeably slow the tempo in order to get all of those words out of her mouth but still turns in a fine performance. The Ronstadt concert that forms the focal point of the 1978 film FM also features “Tumbling Dice”. But there was no need to look up the words that time; Linda Ronstadt included the lyrics on most of her albums, so they were right there on the album sleeve.
(May 2015)
