1975 · Behind the Songs
A song Neil Young shelved became one of Ronstadt’s signature country hits.
“Love Is a Rose” began life in Neil Young’s notebook. He first recorded it in 1974 for Homegrown, an album he then shelved — it would not see release until 2020 — though the song itself surfaced on his 1977 compilation Decade. Its melody came from yet another unreleased Young song, “Dance, Dance, Dance,” which his band Crazy Horse had already cut under that title on their 1971 album. Ronstadt heard a country song in it. She recorded it in a country style for her platinum album Prisoner in Disguise (1975), produced by Peter Asher, and released it as a single on August 19, 1975, with “Heat Wave” on the B-side.
Country radio agreed with her reading: the single reached No. 5 on the Billboard Country Singles chart and No. 63 on the Hot 100, and in Canada it appeared on the Top Singles chart while reaching No. 46 on the country chart. Pop stations, though, flipped the record over — “Heat Wave,” the B-side, also reached No. 5. Ronstadt kept “Love Is a Rose” in her concert sets through the late 1970s, and the song kept finding new singers afterward: Lisa Loeb recorded it for Camp Lisa (2008), Jill Johnson for Music Row II (2009), and Terri Clark released it as a single from her 2012 album Classic.