On Get Closer, Linda Ronstadt turned “Tell Him” from a bright early-sixties plea into a full-bodied declaration of nerve, rhythm, and emotional command.
On her 1982 album Get Closer, Linda Ronstadt reached back to the exuberant world of early-sixties pop and brought forward “Tell Him”, the song most closely associated with The Exciters. Written by Bert Berns, credited as Bert Russell, the song had become a major hit for The Exciters after its 1962 release, powered by a charging beat, a fierce lead vocal, and the kind of direct romantic urgency that made the best girl-group and R&B records feel like they were happening in the middle of the street. Two decades later, Ronstadt did not treat it like a museum piece. She treated it like a song that still had sweat in it.
That choice mattered. Get Closer, produced by Peter Asher, arrived at a fascinating point in Ronstadt’s career. By 1982, she had already become one of the most recognizable voices in American popular music, moving with rare ease through country-rock, pop, folk, traditional material, and carefully chosen covers. She was not simply a singer who borrowed from the past; she was an interpreter who tested songs under the pressure of her own voice. Her version of “Tell Him” belongs to that gift. It shows how a familiar recording can be honored without being copied, and how a singer can make an old hit feel newly physical without stripping away its original spirit.
The Exciters’ version lives on adrenaline. It rushes forward with youthful certainty, a voice urging action before doubt can enter the room. The record has the snap of New York pop, the heat of early soul, and the communal lift of voices pushing one feeling into the open. Ronstadt’s 1982 reading keeps that urgency but changes the emotional weight. She sings with the strength of someone who knows the stakes more clearly. The pleading remains, but it is less innocent. There is more muscle behind it, more adult confidence in the way she attacks the phrases and lets the rhythm carry her forward.
What makes Ronstadt’s reinterpretation so satisfying is that she does not smooth the song into nostalgia. She does not wink at it, soften it, or turn it into a polite tribute. Instead, she brings “Tell Him” into the sonic world of Get Closer, where rock, pop, and roots music meet with polished but lively energy. The arrangement gives her room to sing with brightness and force, and her vocal phrasing respects the song’s original architecture while refusing to sound locked in 1962. It becomes less a period remake than a conversation between eras: the urgency of the Brill Building age passing through the lungs of a singer who had already remade the idea of what a pop-rock vocalist could do with older material.
Ronstadt had built much of her career on that kind of conversation. She could take a Buddy Holly song, a Smokey Robinson song, a country lament, or a contemporary ballad and locate the emotional center without flattening its character. With “Tell Him”, the challenge was different because the original was already so kinetic and clearly defined. The danger with a song like this is imitation. Too much reverence can make a cover feel airless; too much reinvention can lose the charm that made the record endure. Ronstadt finds a middle path. She keeps the spark, but she changes the temperature.
There is also something revealing about hearing this song on Get Closer. The album stands near the edge of a major transition in Ronstadt’s recording life. Not long after, she would move into the standards era with Nelson Riddle, surprising listeners who thought they already understood the boundaries of her music. In hindsight, her “Tell Him” feels like one more sign of her restlessness. She was still working within the rock and pop language that had made her a star, but her ear was already roaming freely across American song history. She heard old records not as relics, but as living rooms she could walk into and rearrange.
That is why this cover carries more than simple fun, though it certainly has plenty of that. It is spirited, quick, and open-hearted, but beneath the surface is a serious act of interpretation. Ronstadt takes a song once defined by youthful insistence and gives it the authority of a seasoned singer who understands both desire and performance. She does not erase The Exciters; she lets their energy remain visible, then answers it in her own language.
Decades later, Linda Ronstadt’s version of “Tell Him” still feels like a reminder of what a great cover can do. It can renew a song without pretending to improve it. It can carry memory without being trapped by it. And in Ronstadt’s hands, this early-sixties burst of romantic courage becomes something broader: a small, joyful proof that the right voice can make the past move again.
