“Rivers of Babylon” in Linda Ronstadt’s repertoire is less a “song” than a sudden, reverent breath—an ancient lament that flickers through a modern pop album like candlelight in a darkened room.
Placed among the polished heartbreak and radio-ready craft of Linda Ronstadt’s Hasten Down the Wind (released August 9, 1976, produced by Peter Asher, recorded in March 1976 at The Sound Factory in Hollywood), “Rivers of Babylon” arrives as a startling miniature—an interlude so brief it feels almost like a thought you didn’t mean to say out loud. It’s listed as track 7 on the album, and on major track listings it runs only about 0:52–0:54—a flash of sacred text and harmony, gone almost before you can settle into it. Importantly for your usual “ranking at launch” focus: Ronstadt did not release “Rivers of Babylon” as a chart single, so there is no debut position for the track itself. Its public life is tied to the album that holds it—a record that won Ronstadt the GRAMMY for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female (1977 awards), and helped define her mid-’70s peak as an interpreter with fearless taste.
What makes this choice so fascinating is where the song comes from. “Rivers of Babylon” was written and first recorded in 1970 by Jamaican reggae group The Melodians, credited to Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton. Its lyrics draw from scripture—most famously Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon…”), with additional biblical adaptation noted in standard references—yet the song also carries overt Rastafari language, including the invocation of “King Alpha”. That blend—Old Testament grief and Caribbean spiritual identity—gives the piece a peculiar power: it’s both ancient and immediate, both prayer and protest. Even the song’s history includes friction; accounts note the Melodians’ original was controversial enough in Jamaica that it was reportedly banned at first because its Rastafarian references were viewed as subversive.
So why does it appear—so briefly—on Hasten Down the Wind?
Because Ronstadt’s greatest albums often behave like emotional diaries, not mere collections of tracks. Hasten Down the Wind is a record of grown-up feeling: longing, second-guessing, the ache of wanting something true in a world full of performances. In that context, “Rivers of Babylon” feels like the moment the diary stops being romantic and becomes spiritual—when personal loneliness suddenly touches something older, larger, almost historical. Exile is the core image of Psalm 137: a people far from home, asked to sing for their captors, choking on the impossibility of it. That’s the quiet genius of placing it here: even in a 1976 Los Angeles studio, the idea of exile still makes sense. Not exile from a country, perhaps—but exile from innocence, from certainty, from the version of love you once believed would never leave you.
Ronstadt’s recording is also unusual in its texture. Discogs credits indicate a vocal blend—including Linda Ronstadt alongside Andrew Gold and Kenny Edwards—suggesting this isn’t staged as a star vocal spotlight so much as a small choir moment, communal rather than theatrical. That matters: “Rivers of Babylon” is, at heart, a communal lament. It wants more than one throat. It wants the feeling that grief is shared—and therefore bearable.
And then there is the emotional aftertaste: because the track is so short, it doesn’t let you “resolve” anything. It arrives like a sudden memory of something sacred, then vanishes, leaving you to sit with the echo. That’s often how real spiritual recognition works in ordinary life—not as a sermon, but as a moment. A line overheard. A bell in the distance. A phrase that reminds you you’re not the first person to feel displaced inside your own story.
In the end, “Rivers of Babylon” on Hasten Down the Wind is Ronstadt making an audacious, quietly beautiful claim: that pop music can hold scripture without irony, that a rock-and-country singer can step into a Rastafari hymn without turning it into costume, and that sometimes the deepest truth on an album is the one that only lasts fifty-some seconds. It’s a small shard of sorrow and faith—proof that even when love is complicated, the soul still remembers how to pray.