Dopers:
Can you think of any musician with a reasonable amount of popular success who has turned their back on and turned their nose up at their past as thoroughly as Linda Ronstadt?
The last interview with her that I read gave me the impression she wanted to disown the country/pop stylings that gave her all her hits.
There are a number of artists who look down upon their earlier work on grounds they were the product of a callow, undeveloped, immature, and overweeningly pretentious mindset. I know, for example, Paul Simon has said about some of his early hit songs and I’m sure there are others.
Linda Ronstadt has nothing on Yusuf (Cat Stevens) Islam.
Too Good for Pop: Does Anybody Top Linda Ronstadt?
I thought this would be a thread in praise of Ms. Ronstadt’s vocal career. I guess not.
If I re-read some of the stuff I wrote when I was first beginning to write, and it is so bad that I feel queasy and ashamed. Maybe it’s natural as one developes and changes, to scorn the first fumbling steps.
Maybe Linda Ronstadt doesn’t care for her early stuff, but I still love it. Right back to the Stone Poneys stuff and the very first solo records, along with still being fond of pretty much everything she’s done up to today.
Scott Walker went from singing Righteous Brothers-type pop with teenager appeal in the 1960s to making abrasive avant-garde music in the 1990s.
Anyway, I don’t see the Linda Ronstadt transition as all that radical. She’s still singing popular music - standards and Mexican rancheras, I’m assuming - just in different styles. When it comes to singing the old hits, I’m sure boredom sets in after 30 years or so. I recently saw an Aretha Franklin concert where she only sang about two of her many hits of the '60s/'70s that people would’ve recognized.
Rosemary Clooney did a similar thing & gave up singing songs like “Come On-a My House” in favor of more of a jazz singer’s repertoire.
The ones he recorded with whatshisname, I’ll bet. 
As I go through my record collection burning them to CDs I just finished a Stone Poneys album and a Linda Ronstadt album and then I see this thread.
Anyway, didn’t John Lennon at one point say that he hated everything he did with the Beatles?
I just melt when I listen to her sing What’s New.
Michelle Branch had a pretty solid career as a pop singer when she decided to join up with Jessica Harp and switch to country music.