A whisper down the wire — “The Tattler”, where Linda Ronstadt turns an old folk tale into a song of weary tenderness and quiet knowing
Some songs move like gossip, others like prayer. “The Tattler” walks somewhere between — a song that carries both the ache of truth and the soft hum of forgiveness. Linda Ronstadt recorded it for her 1976 album Hasten Down the Wind, released in August of that year. Written by Ry Cooder, Russ Titelman, and Washington Phillips, it began as a re-imagining of Phillips’s 1929 spiritual “You Can’t Stop a Tattler.” Ronstadt’s version never charted as a single, yet it has stayed alive for decades — a quiet favorite from an album that reached No. 3 on Billboard’s 200 and brought her another platinum glow.
The story of “The Tattler” is as old as human frailty itself. It speaks of how words — once loosed — can wound, and how secrets travel faster than hearts can heal. But when Linda Ronstadt steps into it, she transforms it from a warning into something almost compassionate. Her voice glides with a kind of weary understanding, as though she has seen too many whispers turn to storms. There’s no bitterness in her tone, only the sigh of recognition. She doesn’t accuse; she simply knows.
The song begins gently — a steady shuffle of drums, Ry Cooder’s guitar tracing its graceful arc, the air of a dusty backroad at sunset. Then her voice enters, cool and clear, like light slipping through blinds. She sings, “You may run on for a long time, run on, child, run on…” and suddenly the song feels like a conversation between the past and the present. The gospel bones of the old Phillips recording are still there, but in Ronstadt’s hands, they’ve learned to sway instead of march. The admonition becomes a lullaby — less “beware” than “be kind.”
What gives this performance its peculiar beauty is how lightly she carries the weight. There’s wisdom in every syllable, but no judgment. You can feel that she’s been both the tattler and the one whispered about, and that she’s learned what gossip really costs — not reputation, but peace. Her phrasing is tender where others might sneer, her delivery more like confession than scolding. Even when she warns, she comforts.
Throughout Hasten Down the Wind, Ronstadt was deepening her sound — moving away from the bright sparkle of country-rock toward something more introspective, more adult. “The Tattler” sits there as a centerpiece of quiet grace, its folk roots grounding an album that is otherwise full of heartbreak and longing. Surrounded by songs like “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” and “Lose Again,” it feels like a pause — a moment to breathe, to let the hurt speak softly.
There’s something haunting about the way the band holds back, letting silence echo between lines. The guitar answers her like an old friend — sometimes teasing, sometimes consoling. And her voice… it’s that unmistakable instrument, equal parts California sunlight and desert dust. By the time she reaches the end, she sounds like someone closing a letter they’ll never send. The music doesn’t fade so much as settle, like dust in a beam of late-afternoon light.
For those who have lived through long years and longer stories, “The Tattler” carries a familiar ache. It reminds us of how easily we speak, how rarely we listen, and how grace — when it comes — arrives not with thunder, but in a low, forgiving tone.
Play it in the quiet hours, when the house has fallen still. Let her voice drift through the room, half warning, half prayer. You’ll feel the truth of it settle somewhere deep: that words, once spoken, travel farther than we intend; and that forgiveness, like music, sometimes arrives only after the echo.
In Linda Ronstadt’s hands, “The Tattler” becomes not just a song about rumor or regret, but about gentleness — the kind that takes years to learn. It’s a hymn for those who’ve been talked about, and for those who’ve talked too much, and for everyone trying to live kindly in between. A song that doesn’t scold or boast — it simply reminds. And in her voice, that reminder sounds like love trying once more to keep its promise.