Joni Mitchell's lilting anthem Both Sides Now was a top-10 hit for folk singer Judy Collins in the 1960s. Mitchell was herself an aspiring folk-pop singer, and in 1970 she had her own hit single with Big Yellow Taxi. Later singles like 1972's You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio, established her as a complex and highly-regarded musician, beloved for her poetically personal lyrics and go-your-own-way attitude.
Mitchell's albums include Ladies of the Canyon (1970, including the classic "The Circle Game"), Court and Spark (1974, including the single "Free Man in Paris"), Blue (1971), Mingus (1979) and Wild Things Run Fast (1982). She has been cited as an important influence on artists such as and . Mitchell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and was given a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 2002.
Mitchell's tune "Woodstock" has been covered many times, most famously by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young...
She is an accomplished artist who has done the cover art for many of her own albums; she also did the colorful sketch on the front of CSNY's 1974 album So Far...
Former "first daughter" was reportedly named for Mitchell's tune "Chelsea Morning."
Articles, reviews and plenty of opinions on her lyrics
Fiercely independent, her work steadfastly resisted the whims of both mainstream audiences and the male-dominated recording industry. While Mitchell's records never sold in the same numbers enjoyed by contemporaries like , , or , none experimented so recklessly with their artistic identities or so bravely explored territory outside of the accepted confines of pop music, resulting in a creative legacy which paved the way for performers ranging from and to and .
Born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort McLeod, Alberta, Canada, on November 7, 1943, she was stricken with polio at the age of nine; while recovering in a children's hospital, she began her performing career by singing to the other patients.
After later teaching herself to play guitar with the aid of a instruction book, she went off to art college, and became a fixture on the folk music scene around Alberta. After relocating to Toronto, she married folksinger Chuck Mitchell in 1965, and began performing under the name Joni Mitchell.
A year later the couple moved to Detroit, MI, but separated soon after; Joni remained in the Motor City, however, and won significant press acclaim for her burgeoning songwriting skills and smoky, distinctive vocals, leading to a string of high-profile performances in New York City.
There she became a cause célèbre among the media and other performers; after she signed to Reprise in 1967, offered to produce her debut record, a self-titled acoustic effort that appeared the following year. Her songs also found great success with other singers: in 1968,
Thanks to all of the outside exposure, Mitchell began to earn a strong cult following; her 1969 sophomore effort, , reached the Top 40, while 1970's Ladies of the Canyon sold even better on the strength of the single "Big Yellow Taxi.
" It also included her anthemic composition "Woodstock," a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash Young. Still, the commercial and critical approval awarded her landmark 1971 record was unprecedented: a luminous, starkly confessional set written primarily during a European vacation, the album firmly established Mitchell as one of pop music's most remarkable and insightful talents.
Predictably, she turned away from 's incandescent folk with 1972's For the Roses, the first of the many major stylistic turns she would take over the course of her daring career.
Backed by rock-jazz performer , Mitchell's music began moving into more pop-oriented territory, a change typified by the single "You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)," her first significant hit. The follow-up, 1974's classic Court and Spark, was her most commercially successful outing: a sparkling, jazz-accented set, it reached the number two spot on the U.S.
album charts and launched three hit singles -- "Help Me," "Free Man in Paris," and "Raised on Robbery."
After the 1974 live collection Miles of Aisles, Mitchell emerged in 1975 with The Hissing of Summer Lawns, a bold, almost avant-garde record that housed her increasingly complex songs in experimental, jazz-inspired settings; "The Jungle Line" introduced the rhythms of African Burundi drums, placing her far ahead of the pop world's mid-'80s fascination with world music. 1976's , recorded with bassist , smoothed out the music's more difficult edges while employing minimalist techniques; Mitchell later performed the album's first single, "Coyote," at 's concert that Thanksgiving.
Her next effort, 1977's two-record set , was another ambitious move, a collection of long, largely improvisational pieces recorded with jazz players and , , and a battery of Latin percussionists. Shortly after the record's release, Mitchell was contacted by the legendary jazz bassist , who invited her to work with him on a musical interpretation of T.S.
Eliot's Four Quartets. , who was suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, sketched out a series of melodies to which Mitchell added lyrics; however, died on January 5, 1979, before the record was completed. After Mitchell finished their collaboration on her own, she recorded the songs under the title , which was released the summer after the jazz titan's passing.
Following her second live collection, 1980's Shadows and Light, Mitchell returned to pop territory for 1982's ; the first single, a cover of the hit "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care," became her first chart single in eight years. Shortly after the album's release, she married bassist/sound engineer , who became a frequent collaborator on much of her subsequent material, including 1985's synth-driven , co-produced by . Mitchell's move into electronics continued with 1988's Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, featuring guests , , , and .
Mitchell returned to her roots with 1991's , a spare, stripped-down collection spotlighting little more than her voice and acoustic guitar. Prior to recording 1994's , she and separated, although he still co-produced the record, which was her most acclaimed work in years. In 1996, she compiled a pair of anthologies, and , which collected her chart successes as well as underappreciated favorites.
A new studio album, Taming the Tiger, followed in 1998. , a collection of standards, followed in early 2000.
Two years later, Mitchell resurfaced with the double-disc release .
She announced in October 2002 that this would be her last album ever, for she'd grown tired of the industry. She told W magazine that she intended to retire. She also claimed she would never sign another corporate label deal and in Rolling Stone blasted the recording industry for being "a cesspool.
" By the time appeared a month later, Mitchell had simmered down and her plans to call it quits had been axed. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
In her nearly four decades as a musician and lyricist, Joni Mitchell (born 1943) has spanned the fields of folk, pop, rock, and jazz with 23 albums. Her willingness to change direction without warning has frequently left fans upset, but her free spirit has endowed her creativity.By 2002, Mitchell had achieved the stature of Bob Dylan and influenced the likes of and Prince. Even Frank Sinatra recorded one of her songs.
Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada.
She was daughter of Bill Anderson, a grocer, and his wife , a schoolteacher. Mitchell moved with her parents to , Saskatchewan, after ended. At the age of nine, she and her family would move again to , Saskatchewan, which Mitchell today considers her hometown.
After a friend introduced her to classical music, Mitchell asked her parents whether she could study piano. Although the seven-year-old aspiring musician did in fact start piano lessons, the lessons only lasted eighteen months. By then Mitchell had had enough of the "knuckle-rapping" school of music that was then in vogue.
More importantly, she had discovered that she enjoyed creating her own music more than she did learning to do piano exercises. Also at the age of 9, Mitchell contracted polio, a disease that was often fatal at the time. Cared for by her mother, she eventually recovered.
Mitchell also dates her taking up smoking to this period - a habit she continues to indulge in.
In the seventh grade, Mitchell was inspired by an English teacher who encouraged her to write about things she knew and to develop her ability to convey descriptive imagery. Mitchell would later dedicate her first record album to this teacher.
Unable to afford a guitar, Mitchell purchased a baritone ukulele, which she played at parties and the local coffeehouse. After she graduated from high school, she enrolled in 's Alberta College of Art. Finding the classes to be uncreative, she left after a year.
Mitchell had, by this time, become a regular performer at a club in Calgary, so it was not entirely surprising that she left in June 1964 for Toronto to pursue a career as a folksinger.
Finding success in the Toronto music scene proved to be more difficult than Mitchell had imagined. Unable to afford membership in the musician's union, she was unable to get many performing jobs.
Instead, she was forced to take a job in a department store. In February 1965, she gave birth to a baby girl who had been fathered by her ex-boyfriend from college. Shortly before giving birth, she had met a folk singer named Chuck Mitchell, who had offered to take care of her and the child.
A few weeks after the birth of her daughter Joni and were married. Soon after, Mitchell gave her daughter up for adoption. (Mitchell kept the child a secret for 30 years, not even telling her parents.
In 1995, following rumors that appeared on the Internet, Mitchell made contact with the lost daughter.) In the summer of 1965, Chuck Mitchell took Joni with him to Detroit, Michigan, where he found work. A year and a half later Joni and Chuck Mitchell had separated.
Following the 1967 divorce, Mitchell relocated to New York to pursue her musical career. Based in New York City, she acquired a reputation as an songwriter and live performer. In the fall of 1967 she met Elliot Roberts, who began managing her career.
With the help of former Byrds band member David Crosby, she landed a recording contract for a solo acoustic album. In the meantime, she moved to California, where she shared a house with .
Mitchell was given very little compensation in her first recording contract.
Eventually Elliot Roberts negotiated a better deal for her at Reprise, and she received total artistic control of her work. When Mitchell left Reprise, she was able to negotiate similar arrangements with Asylum Records - and later with - that gave her considerably more autonomy than most other recording artists enjoyed. However, disagreements over unpaid royalties would follow and relations with record boss, David Geffen, were strained.
Mitchell's debut album, Joni Mitchell, was released in March 1968. On the album she declined to record any of her songs that other artists had turned into hits. That December, Judy Collins' version of Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" would reach the top of the record charts, earning Mitchell considerable income in royalties.
Instead she performed her relatively unknown folk songs. Interestingly, Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" was written when she was only 21. This fact has amazed many people who have been struck with the depth of emotion expressed in the song.
But as Mitchell told W magazine in 2002, "When I did experience these things, I was right, so I seemed to know what I was talking about."
In April 1969, Mitchell's second album, Clouds, was released. It included her classics, "Chelsea Morning," "Both Sides Now," and "Tin Angel.
" Although Mitchell was unable to get to the 1969 Woodstock rock festival due to excessive highway traffic, she chronicled the event with her song of the same name, which became a hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In 1970, shortly before Reprise released her third album, Ladies of the Canyon, Mitchell won a for Clouds. " In Ladies of the Canyon, Mitchell ventured into increasingly complex arrangements, adding woodwinds, backup singers, and a cello to her own performance.
Ladies would become her first gold album (with 500,000 copies sold).
At this point, Mitchell decided to take a year off from performing. She began traveling through Europe, visiting France, Spain, and Greece.
Her subsequent album, Blue, released in 1971, featured songs she had written during her travels. Blue was also of note because it saw Mitchell alternating between acoustic guitar-and piano-based arrangements. In "For The Roses" (1972), Mitchell used pop-rock arrangements to back up her songs about the problems with being in love and the difficulties of being an artist.
The album quickly climbed the charts. Looking back, Mitchell noted that she passed through her folk period rather rapidly. Her rock 'n' roll career was equally short-lived, probably, she said, because she was never much of a "druggie.
"
In 1974, Court and Spark was released. The album found Mitchell increasingly embracing a "pop" sound, but with the addition of orchestral arrangements and jazz-inspired sounds. Court and Spark had the distinction of appearing when Mitchell was at the peak of her popularity.
Her next offering, Miles of Aisles (1974), was a live rock album based on concerts she gave during the summer of 1974 at the Universal Amphitheater, backed up by the L.A. Express.
The Hissing Of Summer Lawns (1975), although a top seller, evoked some of the first negative reviews to greet Mitchell's work. Some of her fans took particular issue with the criticisms that Mitchell levelled at society in the album. A year later, Mitchell's Hejira (1976) found the artist vocalizing about a spiritual journey she had made.
On this album a guitar, bass, and drums accompanied her. With songs written for the most part when Mitchell was traveling by car though the U.S.
, the album was recorded in the summer of 1976. Many of the songs dealt with Mitchell's concerns about not having a family.
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (1977) was followed by Mingus (1979).
It is generally felt that in Mingus, which Mitchell composed with jazz great Charles Mingus shortly before his death, she failed to reach her own, and presumably Mingus's, expectations. The news was scarcely better a year later when Mitchell released Shadows and Light (1980), which contained live versions of songs that Mitchell had already recorded in the studio on Miles of Aisles. Critics called the album a disappointment.
In December 1980, Mitchell returned to Toronto for her acting debut in a film anthology entitled Love, about women's perceptions of love. She also contributed the title song. However, the film was never released.
But there was also good news - in 1981 Mitchell was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. She subsequently left for a six-week Caribbean vacation, during which she took time to paint.
About this time, Mitchell became embroiled in a dispute with a salmon fishing company that wanted to build a hatchery near some property she owned in Vancouver, Canada.
The local newspaper sided with the hatchery, arguing that its construction would lead to more jobs, while pointing out that Mitchell was not even a full-time resident. The salmon company, for its part, claimed that Mitchell was just some Hollywood celebrity who was out to ruin its business.
In 1985, the all-star single, "We Are the World" was released.
Mitchell, who was at the time studying yoga, later said her yoga teacher sent her to a psychic dietician who hardly allowed her to eat anything. In response, she recorded "Ethiopia" in 1985, a song about an who is experiencing famine. In Dog Eat Dog (1985), Mitchell complained angrily about increasing trends toward censorship, especially in rock 'n' roll music.
The response to Dog Eat Dog was, as usual by this time, mostly negative, and the album ended up with only moderate sales. The disappointing reception led Mitchell to cancel her six-month 1986 tour. She instead stayed home and painted.
But there would be bright spots too. In the fall of 1990, the Los Angeles Theater Center put on a revue with five singers performing the songs of Mitchell. The show ran for three months.
Then in the early part of 1991, a traveling exhibit of Mitchell's paintings made the rounds in Europe. In Night Ride Home, released the same year, Mitchell made do without any guest artists, and her vocals came across as deep and rich. Turbulent Indigo (1994) saw Mitchell return full circle in a melancholy mood to her earlier work.
In February 1996, Mitchell received the Orville H. Gibson Award for best Female Acoustic Guitar Player, even though she had by that time switched from acoustic to electric guitar. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Mitchell in 1997.
On Taming the Tiger (1998), Mitchell played a computerized guitar to produce a sound unlike anything she had achieved before.
With Both Sides Now (2000), Mitchell's voice came across as ravaged from her years of smoking. The album could not be salvaged even with the backup of a large orchestra conducted by Vince Mendoza.
Travelogue (2002) once again saw Mitchell performing well past her prime. On the album, she recorded some of her old songs with the backup of the London Symphony Orchestra, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock. The album had few admirers.
Part of the problem was that by 2002, Mitchell's voice no longer had the three-octave range of her youth. While her cigarette smoking had contributed, it was also as Mitchell told W magazine, "I don't take good care of my voice." But she added that she would rather sound gravelly like Louis Armstrong than pitch-perfect like Streisand.
Following the release of Travelogue in 2002, Mitchell took aim at the music industry, calling it a "corrupt cess-pool," while announcing her decision to stop recording. Mitchell also said that musicians today are made, not born. She told W magazine, "The artists don't have to play anything - they can cheat, buy songs and put their name on them, so they can build the illusion that they are creative.
And because [the record companies] made you, they can kiss you off. Me, I don't sell that many records, but they can't kiss me off so easily." As she notes, her records have rarely sold large numbers.
During her remarkable career she had only one Top 10 record ("Help Me"), and that was in 1974.
In November 1982 - although the dates vary - Joni married bass player and sound engineer Larry Klein. Although they separated in 1994, they have continued to collaborate professionally.
Besides her marriages to Chuck Mitchell and Larry Klein, Mitchell has been romantically linked to David Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor, Warren Beatty, and Jackson Browne.
Fleischer, Leonore, Joni Mitchell, Flash Books, 1976.
Guardian (London, England), November 21, 2002.
New York Times, January 5, 2003.
W, December 2002.
"The Joni Mitchell Homepage," Available online at (January 2003).
For more famous quotes by Joni Mitchell, visit early and was considered a key part of the scene. Throughout the 1970s, she explored and combined the and genres. Mitchell has amassed a body of work that is highly respected, especially by fellow musicians.
Retrospective appraisals of Mitchell's work have often labeled her the "female ", , but Mitchell has rejected that comparison.
Mitchell is also an accomplished visual . She has, through or , created the for each of her albums and has described herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance.
" A blunt critic of the music industry, Mitchell has stopped recording over the last several years and now focuses mainly on her , although in October 2006 she announced that she is working on material for a new album.
nine, when the family moved to , , which Mitchell considers her hometown. She began taking lessons at age seven, and immediately felt the creative instinct to write her own music.
Meanwhile, she excelled at in school, and a teacher who saw her talent in art suggested she should try music as well.
At the age of nine, she contracted but recovered after a stay in hospital. Her first performances were to other patients there.
She also took up at the same age, which may explain the unique texture to her voice, especially on her later albums.
performing at parties. This grew into busking and playing in and other venues in Saskatoon.
After finishing high school she attended the for a year, but then left and returned to the coffeehouse scene.
As Mitchell prepared to leave her home in Saskatoon to relocate to Toronto, she became . Seeing no other alternatives, she gave her daughter, Kelly Dale Anderson (born , ), up for .
The experience remained a private part of her life during the ascendance of her career, but she made allusions to it in several songs, most notably the song " ," (from "Blue") and, years later, the not raise her"). Her daughter, renamed Kilauren Gibb, began a search for her as an adult, and the two were reunited in 1997. performed frequently in coffeehouses and and, now creating her own material, became well known for her unique style of songwriting and her innovative guitar style.
Personal and often self-consciously poetic, her songs were strengthened by her extraordinarily wide-ranging voice (with a range in pitch at one time covering over four ) and her unique style of playing, which makes extensive use of alternative tunings.
While she was playing one night in "The Gaslight South" , a club in , walked in and was immediately struck by her ability and her appeal as an artist. He took her friends.
Much of her initial acclaim was as a result of other artists covering her songs. Her first songwriting credit to hit the charts, "Urge for Going," was a success for country singer and for also since recorded the song to great effect.
Turn Me On I'm A Radio", but was not released on an album until the Hits compilation in .
In any version, "Urge for Going" was an audacious piece of songwriting, painting an extremely evocative picture of the oncoming of dread winter. Not surprisingly for someone from the Canadian plains, Mitchell had a finely developed sense for the passings of seasons and comings of age, themes that would appear on her "The Circle Game", which recorded a well-received take of in 1968.
"Chelsea Morning" and "I Don't Know Where I Stand" on their debut album, recorded in late , and the otherwise unreleased "Eastern Rain" on their second album the following year.
The songs on Mitchell's first two solo albums, (1968) and (1969), were archetypes of the nascent singer-songwriter movement of the time.
Mitchell moved to in late 1967. By the time of her third album, well as containing her first major hit single, the environmental " ", and the advice of her manager for fear that she would miss a scheduled appearance on , and has since said the decision to miss the concert was one of the biggest regrets of her life.
"For Free" is the first of Mitchell's many songs that underscore the dichotomy between the benefits of her stardom and its costs, both in terms of its pressure and of the loss of privacy and freedom it entails.
considered the best of this period, as well as a template for confessional songwriting. Exploring the various facets of relationships, from infatuation on " " to insecurity on "This Flight Tonight", the songs featured an increasing use of on " " , "California", " ", and " " and piano (due in part to her admiration for 's work).
Some of the piano-led songs featured the rhythms associated with . However, her Canadian past was not left behind: " " found her in warm climes at Christmastime, only to say, "I wish I had a river / I could skate away on." In the 2000s "River" would be rediscovered by the plethora of all-Christmas-music holiday programming radio stations.
Covers of this song have been recorded by numerous The more straightforward rock influence was still strong on her next two albums, recorded for new label Asylum. "For Free", sold well, supported by the country-influenced hit single "You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio". However, it was (1974), a hybrid of pop, rock, and folk with a jazzy sheen, that proved to be a huge success, producing such classic songs as " " "brokenlink">Car On A Hill" and, most notably, " ", which, to this day, remains her Court and Spark was also notable for the first echoes of the influence of jazz on Mitchell's work, and despite the backed by the 70s pop-jazz outfit L.
A. Express, she would spend the rest of the decade following that muse and creating more Mitchell's album was the first album to stylistically depart from the folk/pop foundation Mitchell had developed. It was also a lyrical departure, with the confessional style replaced by a series of vignettes, from mobsters and nightclub dancers ("Edith and stylistically diverse, with complex vocal harmonies set with African drumming (the of often cite Hissing as their favorite Mitchell work, it was not well received at the time of its release.
A common legend actuality it was called only the worst album title . (Mitchell and Rolling Stone have had a contentious relationship, initiated years earlier when RS featured a "tree" illustrating all of Mitchell's alleged romantic partners, primarily other musicians.)
in 1976, she performed as part of " " by .
(1976) continued Mitchell's trend toward jazz. The instrumentation is very intimate, consisting only of Mitchell's acoustic guitar, the electric guitar of , and 's fretless (on one track, Mitchell and Carlton reverse roles.) The songs themselves, however, featured densely metaphorical lyrics and swooping vocal melodies providing contrast and counterpoint to the jazz rhythms of the arrangements.
This album also highlighted as never before the unusual "open" guitar tunings that Mitchell used.
the freedom and abstraction of jazz, a double album dominated by the lengthy part-improvised "Paprika Plains". The album received mixed reviews - its experimentation and originality were not generally expected of such a celebrated music star.
Some argue this style of music was ahead of its time, citing the fact that numerous "jam bands" play today to the delight of college students both in similar style and oftentimes with similar conviction. The cover of the album created its own controversy; Mitchell was featured in several photographs on the cover, including one where she was disguised as a black man.
who died before the project was completed in 1979.
Mitchell finished the tracks with a band featuring Pastorius, and and the resulting free-form, sometimes arhythmic music was daring and eclectic. was poorly received; rock audiences were not receptive, and jazz purists were unimpressed. However, appreciation for this work has grown considerably over the years.
recent tours, in . The album contained some earlier hits, but focused on the late 1970s catalogue of songs.
The saw a reduced output of recordings compared to the previous decades.
Only three songwriting, including "Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody" that incorporated the chorus and parts of the melody the famous Righteous Brothers hit, and "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care" - which charted higher than any Mitchell single since her 70s sales peak. Though it was influenced largely by Mitchell's marriage to producer Larry Klein, Mitchell complained that critics reduced the new music to a batch of "I love Larry" songs.
For Dog Eat Dog (1985) British performer and producer was brought on board.
Largely an indictment of consumerism and the political landscape of the time, Mitchell employed a host of modern sounds, courtesy of the Fairlight CMI synthesizer. Of Dolby's role, Mitchell later commented, "I was reluctant when Thomas was suggested because he had been asked to produce the record (by Geffen), and would he consider coming in as just a programmer and a player? So on that level we did have some problems.
..He may be able to do it faster.
He may be able to do it better, but the fact is that it then wouldn't really be my music."
Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm (1988) saw Mitchell collaborating with multiple artists, including , , , and . The songs spanned several genres, including a duet with on "My Secret Place".
To some critics Prophecy" were a better marriage of Mitchell's voice to electronic arrangements.
For her final Geffen album, 1991's Mitchell presented what she described as a batch of "middle-aged love songs." Critically, it was better received than her 80s work and seemed to signal a move closer to her acoustic beginnings.
But to many, the real return to form came with the winning (1994). "Indigo" was Mitchell's most simple, straightforward set of songs in years, mixing politics ("Sex Kills") with romance ("Sunny Sunday") and winning two Grammy awards, including Best Pop Album. Mitchell released her most recent set of 'original' new work with appearances, most notably a co-headlining tour with and .
, performed with an orchestra. It received mostly strong reviews and ) and remains a strong seller. The album contained transposed down to Mitchell's now-dusky, soulful alto range.
Its success led to 2002's Travelogue, a collection of re-workings of her previous songs with lush orchestral accompaniments. Mitchell had stated that this would be her final album. In 2003, Mitchell's Geffen recordings were collected in a four-disc box set, The Complete Geffen Recordings.
Included were remastered versions of all four albums, personal notes by Mitchell herself and three bonus tracks - A wordless vocal demo of what Friends" (from ), and an unreleased cover of 's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."
concert in before the . In Prairie Girl liner notes, she writes that the collection is "my contribution to Saskatchewan's Centennial celebrations.
"
Recently, Mitchell has voiced her discontent with the current state of the music industry, describing it as a "cesspool", and stating that she "hates music" and "would like to remember what [she] ever liked about it." She has also expressed her dislike of the 's dominance, and her desire to control her own destiny, possibly Although Mitchell has stated she will no longer tour or give concerts, she has made occasional public appearances to speak (for example) on environmental issues. Currently, Mitchell divides her time between her longtime home in and a cabin in , BC, and is said to be focused mainly on her visual art, which she does not sell and which she displays only on rare occasions.
In an October 2006 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Mitchell apparently "revealed she's recording her first collection of new songs in nearly a decade". She went on, in a different version of the article, to talk about two songs, "Holy War" and "If," based on a poem by . She revealed she has laid down basic tracks for five songs, and will play piano, synthesizers, and guitars will be by Mickey Wynne; the album will feature a familiar Almost every song she composed on the guitar uses an open, or non-standard tuning; she has written songs in some 50 different tunings, which she has referred to as "Joni's weird chords".
The use of alternative tunings allows more varied and complex harmonies to be produced on the guitar, without the need for difficult chord shapes. Indeed, many of Joni's guitar songs use very simple chord shapes, but her use of alternative tunings and a highly rhythmic picking/strumming style creates a rich and unique guitar sound. Her right-hand picking/strumming technique has evolved over the years from an initially intricate picking style, typified by the guitar songs on her first album, to a looser and more rhythmic style, sometimes incorporating percussive "slaps", that have been featured on later albums.
the highest-ranked woman on the list.
For instance, 's song "The Ballad of " off the album , pays tribute to Mitchell, both through his evocative Mitchell-like harmonies and through the use of one of Mitchell's own techniques: as in Mitchell's song "This Flight Tonight", Prince references a song in his lyrics (Joni's own " ") as the music begins to emulate the chords and melody of that song. "Crosby, Stills Nash (and Young)">Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and , "This Flight Tonight" by , "A Case of You" by Although Mitchell usually refrains from commenting on other artists, particularly ones that she influences, she has expressed satisfaction with the work with two jazz-based artists who have interpreted her songs, and .
Although most listeners tend to remember Mitchell's earlier, more commercially popular work, many musicians have found inspiration in her more experimental work, said to be written about 's infatuation with Mitchell, a claim that seems to be born out by the fact that, in live performances, Plant often says "Joni" after the line "To find a queen without a king, they say to the alternative tunings Mitchell uses.
. In , she received Billboard's Century Award.
In 1996 she legacy is described by critics, singling out in particular the "female " moniker. "Being female creates a new category in some people's minds. No one would say that Dylan is the 'male Joni Mitchell.
'"[ She then received a in the rock era" and "a powerful influence on all artists who embrace diversity, imagination and integrity."
We are stardust, We are golden, And we got to get ourselves Back to the garden.
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