I don’t know much about Selena Gomez, but I’m predisposed to like her because she reminds me of my all-time favorite singer, Linda Ronstadt. They’re both Mexican American and both Cancers—so maybe I know more about Selena than I thought. Linda never married but adopted two children. Her voice, like Selena’s, has always sounded like someone unafraid to love deeply. Now she can no longer sing.
A few years ago, some friends and I decided to write letters to people we admired. My friend Ryan—then a lawyer, now a judge—was scandalized that I addressed mine “Dear Linda.” He insisted it should say “Dear Ms. Ronstadt.” I compromised with “Dear Linda Ronstadt.” She never wrote back, so I’ll never know what the right choice was. (Ryan, for the record, wrote to the president of the Wildlife Bird Fund and got a response.)
In her memoir Simple Dreams, Linda admits she preferred singing ballads, though her producers kept pushing her toward upbeat material. Many of those uptempo songs—“You’re No Good,” “Hurt So Bad,” “Heat Wave”—became huge hits. But I’m a “Blue Bayou” kind of guy.
Linda just has a way of singing about heartache that makes you believe her. So does Selena. On “Younger and Hotter Than Me,” she sounds like someone trying to talk herself into being fine and failing. Linda was like that too. Both singers know how to wring emotion out of a song, especially when the feelings are complicated.
I’ve always been drawn to songs about unrequited love. As a closeted gay teenager in the ’90s, I found my feelings most clearly expressed in Les Misérables’ Éponine: an outcast who lives in a romanticized fantasy world. As a homage to her rain-soaked devotion, I adopted an army-surplus trench coat and a Greek fisherman’s cap as my high school uniform.
At the height of her fame, Linda took a turn on Broadway in The Pirates of Penzance. Has anyone thought about Selena for the Great White Way? Like Éponine, she makes heartbreak sound heroic. Can’t you just picture her crying in the rain?
