The Quiet Ache of a Heart Still Willing to Believe
When Linda Ronstadt released “Try Me Again” on her 1976 album Hasten Down the Wind, she was already at the peak of her creative and commercial power. The album itself reached the Top 3 on the Billboard 200 and earned Ronstadt a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female — proof of her dominance during a decade she helped define. Yet amid its lush arrangements and well-chosen covers lies “Try Me Again,” a song she co-wrote with Andrew Gold — one of the rare times Ronstadt stepped into the role of songwriter. Though never released as a single, it stands as one of her most intimate and revealing performances, quietly capturing a side of her artistry that fame often obscured: the tender vulnerability behind her formidable interpretive strength.
What makes “Try Me Again” so affecting is its emotional restraint. The song unfolds slowly, with a delicacy that feels almost like hesitation — a musical embodiment of its plea for another chance at love. The arrangement is sparse by Ronstadt’s mid-’70s standards: gentle piano chords, brushed drums, and an understated string presence that never overshadows her voice. That voice, crystalline yet full of ache, becomes the centerpiece — not belting, not commanding, but searching. Each phrase carries the weight of someone who has known heartbreak deeply enough to fear it and hope for it in the same breath.
Co-writing this track marked a significant moment in Ronstadt’s career. While she was celebrated for transforming other writers’ songs into her own emotional language, “Try Me Again” revealed what happened when she turned that interpretive power inward. The lyrics speak with the humility and honesty of someone who has been bruised but not broken — a request for reconciliation that is neither desperate nor naive. It is instead a confession wrapped in grace: an understanding that love, to survive, must sometimes begin again from a place of pain.
The song also reflects the introspective tone that defines Hasten Down the Wind as a whole. Coming after the arena-filling success of Heart Like a Wheel, this album found Ronstadt turning away from pure pop-rock exuberance toward something quieter, more adult — a kind of West Coast melancholy steeped in folk and torch-song traditions. “Try Me Again” serves as its emotional fulcrum: less about heartbreak’s drama than about its aftermath, when silence settles and only honesty remains.
In retrospect, “Try Me Again” feels like a hidden key to understanding Linda Ronstadt’s artistry. Beneath her chart triumphs and genre-crossing versatility lay a singer who could distill human longing into something exquisitely fragile. The song endures not as a hit but as a whisper — one that reminds us that even in moments of uncertainty, love’s voice can still rise from the quietest corners of the soul.