Long Long Time (The Last of Us)

Time does something strange in this recording — it moves slowly, almost geologically, the way certain kinds of longing distort ordinary duration. Ronstadt's voice here is at the height of its powers, rich and round and technically impeccable, but what elevates this beyond a showcase is how completely she disappears into the emotional situation. The arrangement is lush in the manner of early 1970s studio craft: orchestral strings, unhurried tempo, production that feels expensive without feeling cold. The song concerns itself with a very specific flavor of love — the kind that continues even when it becomes clear it will never be returned or resolved, the surrender to feeling something permanently rather than strategically. There's no self-pity in Ronstadt's delivery, which is what keeps it from becoming maudlin; instead, there's a kind of dignity in the commitment to ongoing feeling, a refusal to perform recovery she hasn't actually undergone. In its second life scoring *The Last of Us*, it found a new generation who heard in it the grief of survival — what it means to carry feeling forward through catastrophic loss, to love in a world that keeps destroying the objects of love. This is the song for the long aftermath, for autumn drives when the light has that particular terminal gold quality, for any moment when duration itself becomes the emotional subject.