Joni Mitchell: Her Art and Life in 33 Songs | Pitchfork, May 6 2019
https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/joni-mitchell-her-art-and-life-in-33-songs
Since releasing her first album in 1968, Joni Mitchell has been a singularly influential force in popular music, offering a blueprint for both enlightenment and rebellion. Here, we take a chronological look at the songs that define her legacy so far?but first, here is an essay about her many gifts by cultural critic Ann Powers.
Joni Mitchell Shifts the Weather
When Joni Mitchell first appears in Martin Scorsese?s 1976 concert film The Last Waltz, she?s in silhouette offstage, adding vocals to Neil Young?s ?Helpless.? Young stands in the spotlight with the Band?s Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko; grinning like fools, they look like they?re in on some off-topic joke. Mitchell, on the other hand, is serious, listening intently. Her features are obscured in shadow, the clean lines of her long neck and strong chin reinforcing the posture that always makes her seem to be bound skyward, like an egret.
Like Young, Mitchell grew up in a chilly part of Canada, and the stark dreaminess of ?Helpless,? its evocation of a place where creativity grows from lonely ground, is hers, too. When Mitchell enters the song with her high, nearly wild yet perfectly modulated wail, it doesn?t blend; instead, her voice hits the others like a weather event, an intangible and irresistible current. Kept out of the spotlight, she still claims it?yet she also charts her own path, beyond anyone else?s grasp.
I often think about this moment when trying to comprehend Mitchell?s central, singular role in rock?s evolution. When she began her career in the mid-1960s as part of the folk revival, rock was a game dominated by roguish white boys competing with each other for girls, glamour, and, eventually, social significance. Leading a new cohort of more openly poetic and introspective peers?Young, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King?Mitchell turned rock into an adult pursuit, and folk into a personal one. From breakthrough ballads like ?Both Sides, Now? to irreducible epics like ?Coyote? and ?Paprika Plains,? she showed that songs in the rock and soul era could be both deeply idiosyncratic and vastly observational. They could move through blues tunings, jazz changes, Latin and African rhythms, torch-song intimacies, and prophetic declarations.
Mitchell is a painter, and she creates in shades and planes of perception; she is a cinematic thinker perfecting every detail in her mise en sc?ne. In the 1970s, when she defined the singer-songwriter position, plenty of people were mining their love affairs for lyrics, or trying new guitar tunings, or blending plain conversation with high-flying metaphor; they might?ve also been thinking, however casually, about how their songs might add up to something bigger than just radio jingles. But no one?except, perhaps, in nearby worlds, Nina Simone or Stevie Wonder or David Bowie?did all of these things with such depth and commitment and inventiveness.
Mitchell?s early work, especially 1971?s Blue but also the uncategorizable masterpieces that soon followed it?Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira?inspire the kind of deep identification that makes a listener feel like a song is reaching inside her and digging out what she?s left unspoken. She also found her stride just as second-wave feminism emerged, politicizing the notion that, as the great critic Vivian Gornick once put it, women can and must take their brains seriously. Mitchell?s songs do this work, detailing the inner life of someone risking unbound thought: the high-flying dreams and the crashes into sadness, the struggles between ?the power of reason and the flowers of deep feeling??the way, as she sang in Hejira?s ?Song for Sharon,? these ruminations ?seem to serve me, only to deceive me.? What makes Mitchell?s exploration of the inner life so powerful, though, is that it?s not simply centered in femininity, or in her own experience. Her lyrics unravel the conventional structures of the self, her vantage point shifting from male to female to animal to angelic with a phrase?s turn.
This ?multiphrenic? way of being, as Mitchell calls it, manifests as powerfully in the music she?s embraced. Her submersion into jazz, beginning with Court and Spark and reaching an apex on Don Juan?s Reckless Daughter and Mingus, was controversial in the ?70s; some accused her of playing at a serious (aka boys?) game. She?s been vindicated since, over and over, not only in celebration by her jazz peers but in new generations of listeners. Her 1980s explorations of synthesizer-driven rock and her Grammy-winning 1993 recalibration at midlife, Turbulent Indigo, have fared the same. In recent years, she has focused on building her legacy in her own, singular way. Revisiting her catalog alongside jazz standards on 2002?s lushly orchestrated Travelogue, she unveiled a new voice. Gone were the swooping high notes with which she?d dazzled her early admirers; instead, here was a lived-in voice, tempered by heartache and cigarettes.
Panic struck the pop world when Mitchell suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015. She has taken time to recover, but recently she?s been turning up at tributes, or hand-in-hand with the painter David Hockney at a Los Angeles art gallery. Joni lives! Her ongoing presence feels so important; throngs rejoice at every gossip item that bodes well for her health. This is how uncommonly close people feel to this voice that has spoken in so many ways. But here?s the thing: What Joni Mitchell?s music really offers each listener is a model for finding, growing, and maintaining a voice, and the mandate to trust its unique imprint. Restless multiplicity, wisdom, and a lot of jive: Joni Mitchell?s journeys through consciousness show the importance of them all in articulating a life that?s as free as possible.
Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent and the author of several books, including Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music. She is currently writing a book about Joni Mitchell.
[...] (the 33 songs...) https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/joni-mitchell-her-art-and-life-in-33-songs
https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/joni-mitchell-her-art-and-life-in-33-songs
Since releasing her first album in 1968, Joni Mitchell has been a singularly influential force in popular music, offering a blueprint for both enlightenment and rebellion. Here, we take a chronological look at the songs that define her legacy so far?but first, here is an essay about her many gifts by cultural critic Ann Powers.
Joni Mitchell Shifts the Weather
When Joni Mitchell first appears in Martin Scorsese?s 1976 concert film The Last Waltz, she?s in silhouette offstage, adding vocals to Neil Young?s ?Helpless.? Young stands in the spotlight with the Band?s Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko; grinning like fools, they look like they?re in on some off-topic joke. Mitchell, on the other hand, is serious, listening intently. Her features are obscured in shadow, the clean lines of her long neck and strong chin reinforcing the posture that always makes her seem to be bound skyward, like an egret.
Like Young, Mitchell grew up in a chilly part of Canada, and the stark dreaminess of ?Helpless,? its evocation of a place where creativity grows from lonely ground, is hers, too. When Mitchell enters the song with her high, nearly wild yet perfectly modulated wail, it doesn?t blend; instead, her voice hits the others like a weather event, an intangible and irresistible current. Kept out of the spotlight, she still claims it?yet she also charts her own path, beyond anyone else?s grasp.
I often think about this moment when trying to comprehend Mitchell?s central, singular role in rock?s evolution. When she began her career in the mid-1960s as part of the folk revival, rock was a game dominated by roguish white boys competing with each other for girls, glamour, and, eventually, social significance. Leading a new cohort of more openly poetic and introspective peers?Young, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King?Mitchell turned rock into an adult pursuit, and folk into a personal one. From breakthrough ballads like ?Both Sides, Now? to irreducible epics like ?Coyote? and ?Paprika Plains,? she showed that songs in the rock and soul era could be both deeply idiosyncratic and vastly observational. They could move through blues tunings, jazz changes, Latin and African rhythms, torch-song intimacies, and prophetic declarations.
Mitchell is a painter, and she creates in shades and planes of perception; she is a cinematic thinker perfecting every detail in her mise en sc?ne. In the 1970s, when she defined the singer-songwriter position, plenty of people were mining their love affairs for lyrics, or trying new guitar tunings, or blending plain conversation with high-flying metaphor; they might?ve also been thinking, however casually, about how their songs might add up to something bigger than just radio jingles. But no one?except, perhaps, in nearby worlds, Nina Simone or Stevie Wonder or David Bowie?did all of these things with such depth and commitment and inventiveness.
Mitchell?s early work, especially 1971?s Blue but also the uncategorizable masterpieces that soon followed it?Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira?inspire the kind of deep identification that makes a listener feel like a song is reaching inside her and digging out what she?s left unspoken. She also found her stride just as second-wave feminism emerged, politicizing the notion that, as the great critic Vivian Gornick once put it, women can and must take their brains seriously. Mitchell?s songs do this work, detailing the inner life of someone risking unbound thought: the high-flying dreams and the crashes into sadness, the struggles between ?the power of reason and the flowers of deep feeling??the way, as she sang in Hejira?s ?Song for Sharon,? these ruminations ?seem to serve me, only to deceive me.? What makes Mitchell?s exploration of the inner life so powerful, though, is that it?s not simply centered in femininity, or in her own experience. Her lyrics unravel the conventional structures of the self, her vantage point shifting from male to female to animal to angelic with a phrase?s turn.
This ?multiphrenic? way of being, as Mitchell calls it, manifests as powerfully in the music she?s embraced. Her submersion into jazz, beginning with Court and Spark and reaching an apex on Don Juan?s Reckless Daughter and Mingus, was controversial in the ?70s; some accused her of playing at a serious (aka boys?) game. She?s been vindicated since, over and over, not only in celebration by her jazz peers but in new generations of listeners. Her 1980s explorations of synthesizer-driven rock and her Grammy-winning 1993 recalibration at midlife, Turbulent Indigo, have fared the same. In recent years, she has focused on building her legacy in her own, singular way. Revisiting her catalog alongside jazz standards on 2002?s lushly orchestrated Travelogue, she unveiled a new voice. Gone were the swooping high notes with which she?d dazzled her early admirers; instead, here was a lived-in voice, tempered by heartache and cigarettes.
Panic struck the pop world when Mitchell suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015. She has taken time to recover, but recently she?s been turning up at tributes, or hand-in-hand with the painter David Hockney at a Los Angeles art gallery. Joni lives! Her ongoing presence feels so important; throngs rejoice at every gossip item that bodes well for her health. This is how uncommonly close people feel to this voice that has spoken in so many ways. But here?s the thing: What Joni Mitchell?s music really offers each listener is a model for finding, growing, and maintaining a voice, and the mandate to trust its unique imprint. Restless multiplicity, wisdom, and a lot of jive: Joni Mitchell?s journeys through consciousness show the importance of them all in articulating a life that?s as free as possible.
Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent and the author of several books, including Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music. She is currently writing a book about Joni Mitchell.
[...] (the 33 songs...) https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/joni-mitchell-her-art-and-life-in-33-songs
