On its face, Simple Dreams seems a crazy quilt of styles, from the friendly country-rock remake of Buddy Holly’s ˝It’s So Easy,˝ the brooding covers of Roy Orbison’s ˝Blue Bayou,˝ and Dolly Parton’s ˝I Never Will Marry˝ to dissolute tales of rock & roll madness like the Rolling Stones’ ˝Tumbling Dice˝ and Warren Zevon’s ˝Carmelita˝ and ˝Poor Poor Pitiful Me.˝
Yet Ronstadt is able to keep it all together, proving her interpretive depth and stylistic breadth all at once.
Simple Dreams is perhaps Ronstadt’s most adventurous rock-oriented album, and, with the exception of the drum sounds, which indelibly identify this as a product of the ’70s, it still works.