Linda Ronstadt, "Dedicated to the One I Love" (Elektra) By JOYCE MILLMAN Two years ago, I was making this "Welcome to the Club" tape for friends who'd just had their first child and I was halfway through it when I had to start doing some serious scrounging for songs. John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" was easy. So were the Talking Heads' "Creatures of Love" (as opposed to the more obvious "Stay Up Late") and Bruce Springsteen's "Living Proof." I pretty much had my pick of Pretenders songs. For the hell of it, I threw in the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and Sly and the Family Stone's "Family Affair." But then I was in the land of the (deservedly) lost 45s, those adolescent purchases that always come back to haunt you. "House at Pooh Corner," anyone? "Havin' My Baby"? Jeez -- with rock audiences and artists now well into middle age, you'd think that parenthood, its joys and terrors, would command a bigger part of the rock vocabulary. After all, these are the same artists who proved so adept at immortalizing and exorcising their own childhood demons. But while many of the icons of boomer youth may have bred in real life, they've been reluctant to go on record with their parenting experiences. Look at Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who between them have something like 10 kids, but who've yet to share any deep thoughts about how they feel being rebels-turned-dads. This despite the fact that the Stones' "Voodoo Lounge" tour, like most major rock shows these days, were family affairs attended by parents (sometimes grandparents) and their offspring. If today's kids aren't ashamed to rock out in public with Mom and Dad, why should yesterday's rock stars be so afraid to cop to their own parenthood? Anyway, my tape turned out pretty great, if I say so myself (no "Havin' My Baby"). But if I were to do it again today, I'd have to make room for at least half of the tracks on Linda Ronstadt's new CD "Dedicated to the One I Love." On "Dedicated," Ronstadt, the mother of two, takes rock 'n' roll oldies like the Shirelles' title track, the Everly Brothers' "Devoted to You" and, yes, "Be My Baby" and reworks them as lullabies. (There are also two genuine lullabies here, the Beatles' "Good Night" and "Brahms Lullabye," which she sings with Aaron Neville.) The arrangements are soft and sparse -- no drums (this is supposed to put a kid to sleep, after all), lots of puffy strings and tinkly pianos and, on most tracks, Ronstadt and Valerie Carter's multi-tracked and aurally tricked up voices sounding like a choir of backup-singer angels. Ronstadt takes the songs at rockabye tempos, singing mostly in her upper register. Her voice is hushed and dewy and almost thunderstruck with emotion. You can picture her gazing at the babe in her arms, drinking in the moment -- the maternal love in Ronstadt's voice is that intense. It's the sonic equivalent of a Mary Cassatt painting. It's also the sonic equivalent of a hormonal surge. If you've been there, "Dedicated" will reduce you to a cooing, nostalgic mess -- at least on the first listening. Then you'll either come to your senses or go into sugar shock. If you're not a parent, "Dedicated" may well send you into fits of derisive laughter, not all of it unjustified. Only someone who's absolutely ga-ga with baby-love, as Ronstadt so obviously is, could come up with a version of Queen's "We Will Rock You" -- that fascist toe-tapper -- featuring as its only accompaniment a tape-looped heartbeat and a kid sucking a pacifier. But, listen, parenthood makes you do weird things, sappy things, things you used to cringe at when you saw people doing them on "thirtysomething" (I admit it, folks, I slow-danced with my infant son to Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey"). The truth is, much as I swore I wouldn't, parenthood has changed me, in profound ways and small ones. My head and heart are filled with other considerations now and sometimes all I want from my music is somebody to articulate -- hell, to acknowledge -- them. Is it too much to ask that the person doing the acknowledging not be Kenny Loggins or (eek!) Amy Grant? So, go ahead and laugh at Ronstadt -- ten years ago, I would have too. A lot of people laughed at the family love songs of John and Yoko's "Double Fantasy," dismissed them as hermetic and fatuous. And Entertainment Weekly told Bruce Springsteen to get a life when he released "Lucky Town," his own version of "Double Fantasy," which was a lovely and brave meditation on marriage and parenthood as both the greatest adventure and the greatest risk. Compared to those records, Ronstadt's "Dedicated" is pretty feather-weight stuff. And when you stand it up next to Chrissie Hynde's ferociously honest mom-rock (from the new-parent ambivalence of "Show Me" to the breathtaking unconditional love of "I'll Stand by You") or to the wise and wistful parents-learning-to-let-go songs written by Patti Smith (her lullabye "The Jackson Song") and Kate and Anna McGarrigle ("Sun, Son, Shining on the Water," "Leave Me Be"), "Dedicated's" spun-sugar sleepyhead tunes practically evaporate into thin air. But what's interesting about "Dedicated" is the way Ronstadt and co- producer George Massenburg approach these boomer make-out songs from 30 or 40 years down the road. Back then, the Ronettes and the Shirelles and Phil and Don Everly -- and their listeners, including Ronstadt -- were kids playing house. "Dedicated" could be what they eventually learned about love and commitment. The first line of the title track, for instance - "While I'm far away from you, my baby/ I know it's hard for you, my baby/Because it's hard for me, my baby" -- take on new meaning if you're a working parent. On "Dedicated," Ronstadt, who has previously experimented with opera, big-band standards and Mexican roots music, shakes up (very gently) our ideas about what kinds of love a rock love song can express. Maybe it's the terrifying depth of a parent's love for a child that has scared other pop artists away from the subject. How do you put into words such an overpowering, exhilarating bond? As Ronstadt sings them, the opening lines of the Ronettes' "Baby, I Love You" -- "Have I ever told you/ How good it feels to hold you?/ It isn't easy to explain" -- have never sounded so passionate, or so eloquent. Is rock 'n' roll compatible with parenthood, or do albums like "Dedicted to the One I Love" put you to sleep? Join the conversation in Table Talk.