strained that one winces (at least I do) when Ronstadt wobbles for even a second, as she does on a low note in the second refrain of Oscar Hammer-stein and Sigmund Romberg's antique operetta tune, "When I Grow Too Old to Dream." In that song, Michael Mainieri's vibraphone is such an excellent foil that it's impossible not to notice the minute flaws in the singer's precious performance. Granted, such nit-picking would be out of order if Living in the U.S.A. were ordinary (or, for that matter, extraordinary) pop music. But pop music is about fun and feeling, while Ronstadt seems to be pursuing something entirely different and perhaps antipathetic: perfection.

Because Living in the U.S.A. contains fewer new or unfamiliar songs than any of her previous albums, it not only invites but demands incessant critical comparisons from even casual listeners. Ronstadt's blandly beautiful rendition of the Miracles' "Ooh Baby Baby" is a case in point. Here, the effort in her voice, the pinched strain at the top of her natural range, reminds us of Smokey Robinson's delicious ease, Ronstadt's simple slurs of his shivering glissandos, her stilted rhythm of his sexy, syncopating pause for a fraction of a second between "baby"s on the last chorus.

Linda Ronstadt's concentration is so single-minded that she often misses entirely the wit and irony of her material. She roughens her voice to sing real rock & roll in Chuck Berry's "Back in the U.S.A.," but the original version was partly tongue in cheek, with a background chorus comically babbling, "Uh-uh-uh, oh oh!" (After all, when Berry recorded the tune in 1959, he had already done a stretch in reform school in the good ol' U.S.A.) Ronstadt, however, preoccupied with capturing the proper vocal inflections, reduces the song to punkish patriotism.

In "Blowing Away," the singer's stentorian delivery willfully disregards the pathos of Eric Kaz' lyric. Though holding on stubbornly to the last syllable of the title line, then brutally cutting it off, creates a startling effect, such a technique defies the meaning of the words Ronstadt is mouthing. As unwavering as a rock, this woman will never be blown away, and her performance sounds coldblooded and infinitely less compelling than Bonnie Raitt's warm and touching treatment on Home Plate.

The perversity of Linda Ronstadt's "Blowing Away" may have been prompted