Looks like Linda Ronstadt is the latest legacy musical artist to get a Stranger Things-type bump for a song, only this time it’s for the latest episode of The Last of Us. The episode broke millions of hearts with its incredibly well-acted love story between Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), and the Ronstadt song “Long Long Time” was a huge part of that.
Spotify tweeted that between 11 pm and midnight on January 29, streams for the song increased by 4900 percent. I’m not really sure how much that is but it feels like a whole lot.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
The song wasn’t just played on the show, it was an integral part of the plot and part of the reason Bill and Frank got together. In the episode, Frank finds a Ronstadt songbook and starts to play the song, but poorly.
“This is you,” he tells Bill before sitting at the piano. “Oh my God, that’s my favorite.”
Bill then interrupts him and sings a heartfelt rendition of it, and Frank quickly realizes Bill is gay.
The song then appears in its original form, at the end of the episode, when Ellie and Joel are leaving in Bill’s truck. Here are some of the key lyrics:
“Love will abide, take things in stride, Sounds like good advice but there’s no one at my side. And time washes clean, love’s wounds unseen. That’s what someone told me but I don’t know what it means. ‘Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and make you mine, And I think I’m gonna love you for a long, long time.”
The beginning of the song is about unrequited love, and the latter half is about “a love that never was,” so it makes sense they didn’t play the whole song. “Long Long Time” was written by Gary White, and according to American Songwriter, it came at a pivotal time in Ronstadt’s career.
Ronstadt was coming off the cycle of her debut record Hand Sown.. Home Grown, and she felt like she was “floundering as a singer.” The song proved a good antidote for a stalled career as it became her breakthrough hit. It spent 12 weeks on the Billboard 100 and reached number 25.
In her memoir Simple Dreams, Ronstadt shared the first time she heard the song.
“We saw the last part of his very impressive show made rich with his cowboy falsetto and a song about a poignant, sad girl of a certain reputation named Louise, and then went backstage to meet Gary [White]. He had already packed up his guitar, so he took it back out of its case, sat down, and began to sing [the song]. I told Gary I wanted to record it immediately.”
The Last of Us airs Sundays on HBO, where the first three episodes are available to stream.