“It’s So Easy” is the rush of surrender—when caution falls away, and the heart admits that falling in love can feel as natural as breathing, no matter what the world warns you.
Linda Ronstadt released “It’s So Easy” as a single on September 20, 1977, drawn from her era-defining album Simple Dreams (produced by Peter Asher). The record rose to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, with its peak arriving on December 10, 1977—a Top 5 moment that Ronstadt achieved at the same time her aching “Blue Bayou” was also sitting in the Hot 100 Top 5. That simultaneous Top 5 pairing wasn’t just a commercial flex; it revealed her rare range in real time: one song a soft wound, the other a bright, impulsive yes.
The “ranking at release” story begins with the song’s chart entry: “It’s So Easy” debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 77 on October 8, 1977, then kept climbing until it reached that No. 5 peak. If you enjoy the poetry of numbers, there’s something fitting about that rise—steady, inevitable—like a feeling you try to deny until it’s suddenly everywhere.
Yet this wasn’t originally Ronstadt’s song. “It’s So Easy!” was written by Buddy Holly and Norman Petty and first released in 1958 by The Crickets—and in a twist that still surprises people, the original single failed to chart. Ronstadt’s version, nearly two decades later, turned that overlooked rock-and-roll gem into a late-’70s pop-rock jewel: crisp, confident, and emotionally open without a trace of embarrassment.
That openness is the song’s secret engine. Lyrically, “It’s So Easy” is a gentle rebellion against the grown-up habit of suspicion. The narrator hears the warnings—love’s for fools—and answers with a shrug that is also a declaration: maybe it’s foolish, but it’s real, and it’s happening. In Ronstadt’s voice, “easy” doesn’t mean shallow. It means undeniable. It means the moment when chemistry overrides the long list of reasons you once thought you needed.
And notice how Ronstadt delivers that idea. She doesn’t sound like someone begging to be believed; she sounds like someone who has already stepped over the line. There’s a buoyant swing to her phrasing—part smile, part dare—like she’s singing from inside the feeling rather than commenting on it. Where some love songs dramatize the fall, “It’s So Easy” makes falling feel almost tenderly ordinary: as if the heart, after all its hard talk, simply does what hearts do.
The larger setting matters too. Simple Dreams was one of the defining albums of Ronstadt’s career, and its success was so dominant that it’s often remembered as a moment when she stood at the very center of American pop. The album’s story is inseparable from these singles—“Blue Bayou” and “It’s So Easy”—moving side by side like two emotional seasons: yearning and exhilaration, dusk and daylight.
If “Blue Bayou” is the ache for what’s gone, “It’s So Easy” is the dangerous, beautiful present tense. It reminds you of a time when a voice on the radio could make the whole day feel lighter, when a simple hook could carry a complicated life for three minutes. And perhaps that’s why the song still lands: it doesn’t promise forever. It celebrates the brave little moment when love feels easy—before time tests it, before the world edits it, while it’s still pure enough to sing out loud.
