In Atlanta, 1977, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” sounds less like a breakup song and more like a late-night surrender—where the heart pretends it’s fine, while the voice quietly tells the truth.
On December 1, 1977, at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Linda Ronstadt sang “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” as part of her Simple Dreams era—right in the stretch when her music seemed to live everywhere at once: on radios, in living rooms, and in the shared inner world people carry with them without ever naming it. That Atlanta performance—circulating widely as a preserved concert recording—captures something special about Ronstadt onstage: the way she could be technically immaculate and still feel completely unguarded, as if she were singing to you rather than at you.
The song she chose is older than the moment, and that’s part of its power. “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” was written by Paul Anka and first recorded—and made famous—by Buddy Holly, released in January 1959, only weeks before Holly’s death. Holly’s recording became a posthumous landmark: No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, and No. 1 on the UK singles chart—with the Official Charts archive showing its first UK chart date as 05/03/1959 and confirming its peak at 1. That history hangs in the air whenever the song is sung well: it’s not just a lyric about “moving on,” it’s a lyric haunted by the fact that life does move on, sometimes without permission.
By the time Ronstadt brought it to the Fox Theatre, she already had her own relationship with the song. Her studio recording appeared on Heart Like a Wheel (1974), and it even charted in 1975 as the B-side to “When Will I Be Loved,” reaching No. 47 on the Hot 100 and No. 20 on Adult Contemporary. But what makes “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore (Live in Atlanta, 1977)” feel different is not the statistic—it’s the temperature. Live, the words land with a particular kind of adult clarity, as if the bravest thing someone can do is say “it doesn’t matter” while still sounding like it does.
If you listen with your heart turned slightly toward memory, you can hear why this song suited Ronstadt so perfectly in 1977. Simple Dreams had been released on September 6, 1977, and it went on to sit at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart (for five weeks in late 1977). That kind of success can harden a performer—make them larger-than-life, sealed inside their own legend. Yet onstage in Atlanta, Ronstadt sounds remarkably human. There’s no showy overstatement in her approach to “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” She doesn’t belt to prove she can. She phrases like someone who has lived long enough to know that heartbreak isn’t always fireworks; sometimes it’s simply a quiet recalibration, a morning where the room looks the same but feels permanently rearranged.
The song’s emotional trick has always been its title. “It doesn’t matter anymore” is the sentence we say when we’re trying to survive what still matters. Ronstadt understands that paradox instinctively. Her voice—so famously clear—becomes a kind of emotional close-up: every note clean, yet softened by a sadness that doesn’t ask for sympathy. In that sense, the Atlanta performance is almost conversational, like a confession made after the tears have dried, when pride is back in place but the ache hasn’t fully moved out.
And perhaps that is the lasting meaning of this particular rendition: Linda Ronstadt taking a song born in the orbit of Buddy Holly’s final chapter and placing it inside her own golden moment—reminding us that even at the height of acclaim, a singer can still choose tenderness over triumph. In Atlanta, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” becomes less a closing statement and more an open wound gently covered: not erased, not dramatized—simply acknowledged, with grace.