Introduction
It wasn’t just a performance. It wasn’t just another ballad drifting through the airwaves of the early 1970s. When Linda Ronstadt sang “Long Long Time”, the world stopped, and pain suddenly had a soundtrack. This was not a love song—it was an autopsy of the human heart.
From the first trembling notes, Ronstadt doesn’t sing—she bleeds. Every syllable of “Long Long Time” is soaked in raw ache, the kind of sorrow most singers are too afraid to even touch. Critics at the time called it devastating. Listeners called it unbearable. And yet, millions couldn’t look away. The song didn’t climb the charts because it was sweet or pretty—it became immortal because it was too brutally honest to be ignored.
In a music industry that often packaged heartbreak in glossy, palatable tones, Ronstadt stripped it bare. No comfort. No resolution. Just longing that stretches into eternity. This is why people who hear “Long Long Time” never forget it. It lingers. It scars. It forces you to remember the love you lost and the nights you swore you would never survive.
Decades later, when the song resurfaced in pop culture, new generations were caught off guard. Young listeners who thought they were immune to “old songs” found themselves broken open by Ronstadt’s voice. Suddenly, TikTok wasn’t about dances or trends—it was about tears. Thousands confessed they couldn’t make it past the first verse without collapsing.
So here is the shock: a single song, over 50 years old, has done what no modern anthem of heartbreak could manage. “Long Long Time” isn’t just music—it’s an emotional wrecking ball. And Linda Ronstadt? She remains the woman who turned sorrow into something eternal, something that still cuts as deep today as it did in 1970.
The truth is simple: You don’t listen to “Long Long Time”. You survive it.
Video
Lyrics
Love will abide
Take things in stride
Sounds like good advice
But there’s no one at my side
And time washes clean love’s wounds unseen
That’s what someone told me
But I don’t know what it means
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know
To try and make you mine
And I think I’m gonna love you
For a long long time
Caught in my fears
Blinking back the tears
I can’t say you hurt me
When you never let me near
And I never drew one response from you
All the while you fell all over girls you never knew
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know
To try and make you mine
And I think it’s gonna hurt me
For a long long time
Wait for the day you’ll go away
Knowing that you warned me
Of the price I’d have to pay
And life’s full of flaws
Who knows the cause?
Living in the memory of a love that never was
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know
To try and change your mind
And I think I’m gonna miss you
For a long long time
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know
To try and make you mine
And I think I’m gonna love you
For a long long time
