Linda Ronstadt - Hasten Down The Wind

Smack dab in the middle of the singer's prime output, 1976's Hasten Down The Wind is one of her most powerful, mature and yes, adventuresome albums she was to undertake. Drawing on mostly ballads and using crafted arrangements to emphasize vocals (many featuring gorgeous accapella sections); never to-date had she delivered such a song-to-song concentration of emotion. Continuing to find her muses in writers as diverse as the late Warren Zevon, Ry Cooder, Willie Nelson and Karla Bonoff, this collection was the artist's first to go platinum and captured her a Grammy for the year's best female pop vocal performance.