“Nobody’s” is a small, bruised confession—where Linda Ronstadt sings loneliness not as drama, but as a quiet fact you learn to live beside.
In the early stretch of Linda Ronstadt’s solo life—before the stadium glow, before the radio staples, before her name felt inevitable—there’s a song called “Nobody’s” that tells you something important: she was already an interpreter of ache. “Nobody’s” appears on her second solo studio album, Silk Purse, released by Capitol Records on April 13, 1970, produced by Elliot F. Mazer and recorded largely in Nashville. The album itself became her first to enter the U.S. Billboard 200, peaking at #103—not a triumph in bold numbers, but a meaningful foothold for an artist still carving out her place.
And that context matters, because “Nobody’s” did brush against the charts indirectly. It was used as the B-side to “Long Long Time” on a Capitol single released June 15, 1970. The A-side, “Long Long Time,” became Ronstadt’s first major U.S. charting single, reaching #25 on the Billboard Hot 100—while “Nobody’s” itself did not chart separately, as B-sides typically weren’t tracked as standalone hits in that era unless they gained enough airplay to flip the record’s fate.
The song’s origin story is wonderfully human and almost cinematic in its simplicity. “Nobody’s” was written by Gary White, the same songwriter behind “Long Long Time.” Ronstadt later described discovering White through her musician friend David Bromberg, who took her to see White perform in New York; she went backstage afterward, asked about the songs, and ultimately recorded them—both “Long Long Time” and “Nobody’s”—for Silk Purse. There’s something quietly moving about that: a young singer hearing a song in a room, recognizing herself inside it, and deciding—almost on instinct—that it deserves to live longer than the night.
Musically, “Nobody’s” sits in the tender middle ground that Silk Purse explored: country-inflected pop with Nashville’s disciplined touch, but with a West Coast sensibility in the phrasing—open-throated, emotionally direct, a little sun-faded around the edges. Ronstadt’s voice here is not yet the fully burnished force the world would come to know, and that is precisely the point. You can hear the youth in the tone, but also the instinct: she already knows how to let a lyric land. She doesn’t decorate the sadness. She stands inside it.
The meaning of “Nobody’s” isn’t built on plot twists; it’s built on a feeling that arrives without warning and stays. The title itself—plain, almost blunt—suggests a kind of emotional eviction: not merely “I’m alone,” but “I don’t belong to anyone; no one is choosing me.” In Ronstadt’s delivery, that loneliness doesn’t sound theatrical. It sounds like the moment after company leaves, when the room keeps the shape of voices that are no longer there. That’s her gift: she can make heartbreak feel less like a performance and more like recognition.
If “Long Long Time” is the album’s headline ache, “Nobody’s” is the aftertaste—the quieter companion that proves how deep her listening ran even then. And when you remember that Silk Purse was her first step onto the Billboard 200 at #103, you can hear the stakes differently: a young artist trying on adulthood in public, singing grown-up sorrow before the world had decided she was famous enough to deserve it.
Today, “Nobody’s” feels like one of those tracks you discover late—maybe when you’ve already lived through a few seasons of your own—and you wonder how it stayed hidden for so long. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t chase you. It simply waits, and when you finally press play, Linda Ronstadt is there—clear-eyed, compassionate, and unafraid to name the emptiness without flinching.
Not every song that matters arrived with a chart number beside its name. Some songs matter because they tell the truth softly, in a voice that refuses to lie. “Nobody’s” is one of those truths—small, steady, and unforgettable.