Asylum, 1972.
vinyl condition: VG
| Joni Mitchell is a Canadian singer-songwriter and painter. Drawing from folk, pop, rock, classical, and jazz, Mitchell's songs often reflect on social and philosophical ideals as well as her feelings about romance, womanhood, disillusionment, and joy.
In 1965, she moved to the US and began touring. Some of her original songs (URGE FOR GOING, "CHELSEA MORNING, BOTH SIDES, NOW, THE CIRCLE GAME) were covered by other folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell helped define an era and a generation with popular songs like BIG YELLOW TAXI and WOODSTOCK.
Mitchell has said that the parents of baby-boomers were unhappy, and "out of it came this liberated, spoiled, selfish generation into the costume ball of free love, free sex, free music, free, free, free, free we're so free. And Woodstock was the culmination of it." But "I was not a part of that," she explained in an interview. "I was not a part of the anti-war movement, either. I played in Fort Bragg. I went the Bob Hope route [i.e., touring to entertain military personnel] because I had uncles who died in the war, and I thought it was a shame to blame the boys who were drafted.”
Her 1971 album Blue is often cited as one of the best albums of all time; it was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", rising to number 3 in the 2020 edition. In 2000, The New York Times chose Blue as one of the 25 albums that represented "turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music". In 2017, NPR ranked Blue number ONE on a list of Greatest Albums Made By Women.
Mitchell's fifth album, For the Roses, was released in 1972. She then switched labels and began exploring more jazz-influenced melodic ideas, by way of lush pop textures, on 1974's Court and Spark, which featured the radio hits HELP ME and FREE MAN IN PARIS and became her best-selling album.
Mitchell is the sole producer credited on most of her albums, including all her work in the 1970s. A critic of the music industry, she quit touring and released her 17th, and reportedly last, album of original songs in 2007. Mitchell has designed most of her own album covers, describing herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance".
She has received many accolades, including nine Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.