Mad Love

Mad Love is the tenth studio album by singer Linda Ronstadt, released in 1980. It debuted at #5 on the Billboard album chart, a record at the time and a first for any female artist, and quickly became her seventh consecutive album to sell over one million copies. It was certified platinum and nominated for a Grammy. The album reflected the advent in the later 1970s of punk rock and new wave music. Defining their work as a programmatic return of rock music to its original principles, punk and new wave bands rejected the emphasis on virtuosity and high production values favored by the megastars of the decade, ridiculed the anti-establishment claims of lavishly-paid, jet-setting performers and deplored the increasing corporatization and homogenization of rock music. Many veteran acts, including Fleetwood Mac, Carly Simon, Heart, Queen, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, made sincere (and often successful) efforts to revitalize their sound by adopting aspects of the stripped-down, unpretentious D.I.Y. punk and new wave aesthetic. Mad Love was Ronstadt's response to this trend. The album contains three songs by Elvis Costello ("Party Girl", "Girls Talk" and "Talking in the Dark") as well as three tracks from The Cretones' first album, Thin Red Line (1980). Although Ronstadt had regularly recorded edgy material by non-mainstream songwriters, including Elvis Costello’s “Alison,” she hired Cretones guitarist Mark Goldenberg to provide arrangements, play guitar and lend authenticity to the project. The cover art’s brash, hot pink and black ransom-note graphics and the singer’s new spiky, short-cropped hairstyle reinforced Mad Love’s claim to New Wave status.