The essential elements of singing are voice, musicianship, and story. It is the rare artist that has all three in abundance.
Interpretation
Successful singing combines vocal ability, musical skill, and storytelling. Few artists excel in all three areas.
In this quote, Linda Ronstadt emphasizes the critical components that contribute to effective singing: a strong voice, enhanced musicianship, and the ability to tell a compelling story through music. By highlighting that it is uncommon for an artist to possess a harmonious balance of these three elements, she suggests that true artistry in singing is a rare and valuable combination that deeply resonates with audiences.
In practice
A music teacher could use this quote to inspire students to develop their vocal skills, musicianship, and storytelling.
I don't record (any type of genre of music) that I didn't hear in my family's living room by the time I was 10. It just is my rule that I don't break because ... I can't do it authentically ... I really think that you're just hard-wiring (synapses) in your brain up until the age of maybe 12 or 10, and there are certain things you can't learn in an authentic way after that.
I miss singing every day. I can't sing anymore. My voice doesn't work. I have Parkinson's disease, and it sometimes takes my words away from me.
I first knew Laurie Lewis by her considerable reputation as a fiddle player and a writer of songs. When an opportunity came along to sing with her I seized it. Getting to know her as a singer and a person has been pure pleasure. Her voice is a rare combination of grit and grace, strength and delicacy. Her stories are always true.
Songwriting wasn't my gift. I think you have to cultivate a gift; you have to practice and develop craft around your gift so that you can execute it in more convenient, efficient ways.
Ninety-nine percent of singing is listening and hearing, and so then 1 percent of it is singing.
Ninety-eight percent of the singing I did was private singing - it was in the shower, at the dishwasher, driving my car, singing with the radio, whatever. I can't do any of that now. I wish I could. I don't miss performing, particularly, but I miss singing.
Art is the easiest thing in my life, and that's ironic. It doesn't mean I've worked little on it, but it's the only thing I never had to... I have no fear. I could take risks.
The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer
It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.
T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.
People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spot blues. Murky darkness. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them.
It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all.
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