Streaming’s algorithms make it easy to avoid whole discographies – so in the interest of deeper listening, our writers dedicate time to the ones who might have got away
The first time I heard Joni Mitchell, in 1997, she was looped across the chorus of Janet Jackson’s single Got ’Til It’s Gone. The song’s credits would educate me on the sample’s origins; I had previously assumed Big Yellow Taxi was an Amy Grant original. The second time I heard a Mitchell song was when Travis covered the beautiful River as a B-side.
Mitchell always seemed a bit too “adult” to me, or too folky, or too jazzy. As with Bob Dylan, another entry in the “best artists of all time” canon that had eluded me, I had dismissed her voice as an acquired taste. My childhood home was all Michael Jackson, TLC and Meat Loaf, while my teenage years leaned towards singer-songwriters who could channel my angst: I played a lot of Alanis Morissette.
I emailed this perhaps depressing backstory to author Ann Powers, whose book Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell tells a similar story. “With time I came to realise that Joni’s great gift is for capturing the tangled ways in which people ruminate and, trying to make connections, communicate with each other,” she replied, before name-checking two Mitchell classics, Blue and Hejira. But my mention of Janet Jackson, she said, makes her think of Prince, whose favourite Mitchell album was 1975’s initially misunderstood experimental gem, The Hissing of Summer Lawns. “It’s her vibe-iest album and the one in which she fully employs her gift for social critique,” Ann added.
