Linda Ronstadt - "Long Long Time"
Feb 3, 2023 13:46:34 GMT -5
Post by areyoureadytojump on Feb 3, 2023 13:46:34 GMT -5
radioinsight.com/blogs/248245/the-lost-factor-vs-linda-ronstadt/
THE LOST FACTOR VS. LINDA RONSTADT
bySean Ross
Linda Ronstadt Silk PurseI have place memories for a lot of songs, many of them involving the first time I ever heard them, but I don’t have one for “Long Long Time” by Linda Ronstadt. At some point by the mid-‘70s, it was just a song that I knew. I think I knew it before late 1974, but it certainly was a song that many radio stations had gone back to play after Ronstadt broke through with “You’re No Good.”
“Long Long Time” was a No. 25 single in 1970. It was a top 10 record at some big stations, including KHJ Los Angeles, WRKO Boston, and CHUM Toronto, but I don’t know if it ever got to WPGC Washington, D.C., where I would have been most likely to hear it. Once Ronstadt was a star, I remember it as a regular AC record for a while, but not quite a staple—more as a secret weapon that a certain type of music director would have prided himself or herself on finding.
During that time in the late ‘70s, Ronstadt was clearly a superstar artist at radio, particularly after fall ’77. Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou” was already climbing the charts when the Simple Dreams album came out. Radio immediately seized on her version of “It’s So Easy.” Rather than switching singles, Elektra/Asylum successfully worked both, a rare occurrence in a pre-Bieber/Grande/Sheeran world. The closest recent comparison is SZA, whose “Nobody Gets Me” was already ascendant when “Kill Bill” exploded.
“Long Long Time” is the No. 4 single in the iTunes Music Store this morning. Since its appearance in The Last of Us last weekend, it has been the subject of stories in Billboard and Variety, but also in the Los Angeles Times, and on CNN and Today. “Long Long Time” is now being discussed in the same terms as last year’s comeback for Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” After reports that it was over 20 million streams, Radiocrunch’s Anthony Acampora went for a loftier comparison, wondering if it was the next “Unchained Melody.”
There has been a lot on social media this week about how it’s nice to see Ronstadt receiving so much attention again. I saw similar comments after the 2019 documentary The Sound of My Voice. The spotlight on Ronstadt has been made more poignant by her battle with a Parkison’s Disease-like disorder that halted her singing career.
But if “Long Long Time” is the next “Unchained Melody,” radio is reacting slowly. As of Thursday morning, with three days of airplay since the show’s airing, “Long Long Time” has gotten 14 radio spins, according to Mediabase. Three of those are on KOAI (The Wow Factor) Phoenix, which to PD John Sebastian’s credit had already given the song 300 spins over the last few years. The rest have been single spins, including AC WMJX (Magic 106.7) Boston and several non-comms (WXPN Philadelphia, KEXP Seattle, WNXP Nashville). “You’re No Good” got 68 spins over the last seven days.
By comparison, Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” another The Last of Us sync, is up to 159 Mediabase spins for the previous seven days. That includes iHeart Alternative outlets WWDC (DC101) Washington, where it has gotten 23 spins, WRFF (Alt 104.5) Philadelphia’s 19 spins, and KYSR (Alt 98.7) Los Angeles with 14 spins. The song is also on rival KROQ with 5 spins. The difference shows that it’s easier for radio to acknowledge an ‘80s song—from Classic Hits radio’s core era—than to go back to the ‘60s or ‘70s. (The Beatles’ “Glass Onion,” another song with a sync-driven pop culture rebound, got 10 spins last week.)
The #3 version has 9.3 million streams:
