"How Do I Make You," Linda Ronstadt (1980)

Peak: #10 on the Hot 100
Streams: 3.7 million

Despite loving Linda Ronstadt’s music for my entire life — so much that I immediately made a mix of her hits when I first got access to a CD burner — I somehow missed her 1980 album Mad Love. I finally heard it a few years ago, and I was floored.

The album’s biggest hit was “Hurt So Bad” (#8 on the Hot 100), and it’s very much in her wheelhouse of sweeping balladry. But the rest of the record pushes her toward new wave and garage rock. Her cover of “I Can’t Let Go” by The Hollies is a geyser of energy, filled with rock yelps and contrapuntal background vocals, and it gives me a thrill every time I hear it. Her take on Elvis Costello’s “Girls Talk” marries a rollicking rhythm with a vocal that’s occasionally edged in bitterness. This is very different energy for the artist who dominated the 70s by covering songs like “Heat Wave” and “Blue Bayou.”

The experiment of the album is best epitomized by its first single, “How Do I Make You.”

This track is just pure, restless drive. Linda cannot believe a guy she likes won’t pay attention to her, and she is frantic to get him to notice. Her voice careens through the song, leaping up into yowled high notes and producing actual growls. Meanwhile, the guitars, the drums, and the backing vocalists add to the frenzy. It’s three minutes of music that refuses to let up. It makes me boogie in my chair, my car, whatever. It’s the greatest.

At the time, the Mad Love album got so-so reviews from critics who felt that Ronstadt was just aping Debbie Harry, and while it sold a million copies, it wasn’t nearly as popular with her fans as her blockbuster albums Simple Dreams or Heart Like a Wheel. After making one more similar-sounding record (complete with the incredible single “Get Closer”), she pivoted to making standards with Nelson Riddle for a few years. Those albums sold like gangbusters and set her up for her adult contemporary phase in the late 80s, when “Somewhere Out There” and “Don’t Know Much” made her the preferred choice of romantic request night on your favorite FM station.

But for me, Linda’s new wave phase is an under-appreciated high point. I’m glad she proved that when she wanted to, she could grunge it up a bit.

And there’s more! “How Do I Make You” was also the first big hit for songwriter Billy Steinberg. This is a big deal because he went on to co-write stone cold classics like Heart’s “Alone,” The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” and “In Your Room,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional,” The Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself,” The Pretenders’ “I’ll Stand By You,” and Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” and “I Drove All Night.” And let’s not forget more recent hits like JoJo’s “Too Little Too Late” and Demi Lovato’s “Give Your Heart a Break.”

Steinberg died earlier this month, but that list of songs guarantees we’ll be singing his music for decades to come. That incredibly legacy started here.