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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Prisoner in Disguise&lt;/em&gt; is an attempt to re-create the enormous critical and commercial success of Ronstadt&amp;apos;s 1974 album, &lt;em&gt;Heart like a Wheel.&lt;/em&gt; Unfortunately, while every choice on the previous album seemed inspired, these are largely pedestrian. As a parallel work, &lt;em&gt;Prisoner&lt;/em&gt; operates at a distinct disadvantage to &lt;em&gt;Heart&lt;/em&gt;; track by track, it is thoroughly and transparently inferior.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is Ronstadt&amp;apos;s voice, a truly remarkable instrument which she has never learned to control. Ronstadt&amp;apos;s long suit has never been her skill as an interpreter &amp;#x2014; she is easily capable of misunderstanding even so straightforward a lyric as &amp;quot;Tracks of My Tears&amp;quot; &amp;#x2014; and, where Peter Asher and Andrew Gold&amp;apos;s arrangements on the earlier album made up for her failures of comprehension, here, on a much more difficult set of songs, they simply can&amp;apos;t compensate.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;The most striking disparity is between the two old rock hits she chose to cover on &lt;em&gt;Heart&lt;/em&gt;, the hit singles &amp;quot;You&amp;apos;re No Good&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;When Will I Be Loved,&amp;quot; and the pair she has selected here. Unlike the others, neither &amp;quot;Tracks of My Tears&amp;quot; nor &amp;quot;Heat Wave&amp;quot; is particularly well suited to Ronstadt&amp;apos;s trembling, country-inflected soprano. Her reading of &amp;quot;Tracks&amp;quot;&amp;apos;s marvelous lyric is somnambulant, her &amp;quot;Heat Wave&amp;quot; taken far too fast &amp;#x2014; it borders on hysteria. And the latter is burdened with a purposeless male chorus, as are several other tracks.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;But even on material which is better suited to her voice, Ronstadt fails. For instance, her country classic for &lt;em&gt;Prisoner&lt;/em&gt; is Dolly Parton&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;I Will Always Love You,&amp;quot; which is neither easy to sing (as was Hank Williams&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;I Can&amp;apos;t Help It [If I&amp;apos;m Still in Love with You]&amp;quot; on the earlier album) nor unidentified with another singer&amp;apos;s version. Ronstadt and Parton have similar voices and Ronstadt likes to play that up, but she lacks the distinctiveness of Parton&amp;apos;s upper range. Similarly, while Ronstadt turned in a first-rate performance on Lowell George&amp;apos;s renegade country classic &amp;quot;Willin&amp;apos;&amp;quot; on &lt;em&gt;Wheel&lt;/em&gt;, she fills the niche here with his notably inferior &amp;quot;Roll Um Easy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Of all the songs which directly parallel others on &lt;em&gt;Heart&lt;/em&gt;, only J.D. Souther&amp;apos;s title song is superior to his earlier effort. It is one of two extremely successful tracks, the other being Neil Young&amp;apos;s simple chant, &amp;quot;Love Is a Rose.&amp;quot; On both of these, she manages to catch the spirit. On songs which require more introspection, however, she is hopelessly at sea. It is difficult to imagine a more thorough misinterpretation than her &amp;quot;Many Rivers to Cross,&amp;quot; but then, it is difficult to imagine anything sillier than Ronstadt singing reggae in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Although the success of &lt;em&gt;Heart like a Wheel&lt;/em&gt; seemed to contradict it, my strongest impression of Linda Ronstadt, after hearing &lt;em&gt;Prisoner in Disguise&lt;/em&gt;, is that she has a great voice and almost no idea of what to do with it. It&amp;apos;s time for her producer and arranger to come up with a new approach.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/prisoner-in-disguise-19751120>