What's New

What's New is Linda Ronstadt's twelfth studio album and her first jazz album.

The album was released in September of 1983 by Asylum Records. It is also the first in a trilogy of albums that Linda recorded with late bandleader & arranger Nelson Riddle.

It was produced by Peter Asher.

Album Background
In 1981, Linda produced and recorded an album of jazz and pop standards (which was later marketed in bootleg form) called "Keeping Out of Mischief" with the assistance of producer Jerry Wexler.

However, her displeasure with the album led to her to scrap the project. According to Linda in a interview with "Time" magazine: "Doing that killed me," but the appeal of the music from the album "seduced" her (according to an interview with "Down Beat" magazine in April of 1985).

By 1983, Linda enlisted the help of then 62-year-old conductor & bandleader Nelson Riddle. Her record company and her manager Peter Asher were very reluctant to produce the album with Linda, but she was able to convince them to greenlight the album under her contract.

The album was recorded from June 30, 1982 to March 4, 1983 at the Complex in Los Angeles, California.

Album Cover
The cover was designed by Kosh. It showed Linda wearing a vintage dress lying on shimmering satin sheets with a Walkman headset next to her.

Tracklisting

 * 1) What's New (3:55) (written by Johnny Burke & Bob Haggart
 * 2) I've Got a Crush on You (3:28) (written by George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin)
 * 3) Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry (4:13) (written by Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne)
 * 4) Crazy He Calls Me (3:33) (written by Carl Sigman & Sidney Keith Russell)
 * 5) Someone to Watch Over Me (4:09) (written by George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin)
 * 6) I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You (4:06) (written by Bing Crosby, Ned Washington, Victor Young)
 * 7) What'll I Do (4:06) (written by Irving Berlin)
 * 8) Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?) (4:18) (written by Jimmy Davis, Jimmy Sherman & Roger "Ram" Ramirez)
 * 9) Goodbye (4:47) (written by Gordon Jenkins)

Chart Performance
"What's New" spent 81 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart, holding the #3 position for five consecutive weeks while Michael Jackson's album "Thriller" and Lionel Richie's album "Can't Slow Down" took the #1 and #2 album positions on the chart.

The album also reached #2 on Billboard's Jazz albums chart. It was certified Triple Platinum for sales of over three million copies in the United States alone.

Critical Reception
At the time, Linda received some chiding for both the album cover and her venture into what was then considered "elevator music" by cynics.

Stephen Holden of The New York Times noted the significance of the album to popular culture when he wrote that it:

"isn't the first album by a rock singer to pay tribute to the golden age of pop, but is ... the best and most serious attempt to rehabilitate an idea of pop that Beatlemania and the mass marketing of rock LP's for teen-agers undid in the mid-60's. In the decade prior to Beatlemania, most of the great band singers and crooners of the 40's and 50's codified a half-century of American pop standards on dozens of albums, many of them now long out-of-print."

Time magazine called the album "one of the gutsiest, most unorthodox and unexpected albums of the year."

Accolades
"What's New" earned Linda another Grammy Award nomination for "Best Pop Vocal Performance."

Album Personnel

 * Linda Ronstadt – vocals
 * Ray Brown – bass
 * Dennis Budimir – guitar
 * Tommy Tedesco – guitar
 * Don Grolnick – piano
 * John Guerin – drums
 * Jim Hughart – bass
 * Plas Johnson – saxophone
 * Bob Cooper – saxophone
 * Oscar Brashear – trumpet
 * Tony Terran – trumpet
 * Chauncey Welsch – trombone
 * Peter Asher – producer
 * Nelson Riddle – arranger, conductor & orchestra
 * Nathan Ross – concert master
 * Leonard Atkinss – concert master
 * George Massenburg – engineer & mixing
 * Doug Sax – mastering