Many veteran acts, including Fleetwood Mac, Carly Simon, Heart, Queen, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, made sincere (and often successful) efforts to revitalize their sound by adopting aspects of the stripped-down, unpretentious D.I.Y.

Although Ronstadt had regularly recorded edgy material by non-mainstream songwriters, including Elvis Costello's "Alison," she hired Cretones guitarist Mark Goldenberg to provide arrangements, play guitar and lend authenticity to the project.

The cover art's brash, hot pink and black ransom-note graphics and the singer’s new spiky, short-cropped hairstyle reinforced Mad Love’s claim to New Wave status.

At the same time, her embrace of a highly-ironic, frenetic, radically unelaborated style had the potential to alienate Ronstadt’s huge mainstream audience eager for the latest iteration of the Heart Like a Wheel formula.

The album's singles — the manic, Blondie-esque rocker "How Do I Make You" and the dark, breathless remake of the 1965 ballad "Hurt So Bad" — climbed to the #10 and #8 positions on the Billboard charts in mid 1980, while other tracks like "I Can't Let Go" received heavy rotation on classic rock FM stations.