It’s no secret that Mitchell’s romantic involvements with Graham Nash, Leonard Cohen, and James Taylor inspired tracks from Blue like “My Old Man”, “A Case of You”, “The Last Time I Saw Richard”, and “This Flight Tonight”. As with contemporaneous releases like Carole King’s Tapestry(also 1971) and Carly Simon’s No Secrets (1972), the intimate style and subject matter of Mitchell’s fourth LP signaled a new era for women performers in American music - one where it became acceptable (and commercially viable) for female artists to write and record songs about their private lives. Nowadays Blue is widely regarded as the blueprint (pun intended) for the “confessional singer-songwriter album” and according to Pitchfork’s Jessica Hopper it’s “the most gutting break-up album ever made”. 3 in the 2020 revision - ranked behind only the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds(1966) and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On(1971) as the greatest album of all time. Rolling Stone selected both albums for its 500 Greatest Albums list in its first iteration in 2003. Meanwhile, Blue and Court and Spark are longtime critical favorites and (as of 2022) the biggest sellers of Mitchell’s career. Still, it hardly gets classic rock radio airplay and remains (in the astute words of Uncut Magazine’s Sharon O’Connell) “widely acknowledged as a transitional record… it falls between the emotional transparency of 1971’s Blue and 1974’s Court and Spark.”Įarly albums like Clouds and Ladies of the Canyon remain iconic for featuring standards like “Both Sides Now”, “Big Yellow Taxi”, “Woodstock” and “The Circle Game”. 11 on the Billboard 200 in November 1972 and later earning a spot in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. The first album in the set, and Mitchell’s fifth overall, turns 50 this month.įor the Roses was successful when it came out, ascending to No. This latest collection features spruced-up re-releases of 1972’s For the Roses, 1974’s Court and Spark, 1974’s live double album Miles of Aisles, and 1975’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns. September 2022 brought the Archives’ second box set of remastered LPs, The Asylum Albums (1972-1975). Demos, live recordings, outtakes, and ephemera from the period of her first four albums’ creation titled The Reprise Years (1968-1971) corresponded with the Reprise Albums box set. That release featured a supplemental essay by Brandi Carlile and arrived after a collection of rare home tapes and live recordings from her time working the coffeehouse circuit as an unknown folkie called the Early Years (1963-1967). Remastered editions of her first four LPs - 1968’s Song to a Seagull, 1969’s Clouds, 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon, and 1971’s Blue - have been made available in a box set entitled The Reprise Albums (1968-1971). But Mitchell’s comeback period really kicked off in September 2020 with the arrival of the Joni Mitchell Archives, an extensive and ongoing collaboration with Rhino Records to put out previously unreleased material in her collection in addition to definitive reissues of her studio albums. That accolade followed the Kennedy Center Honors in December 2021, where she was recognized for her incalculable contributions to the performing arts alongside Bette Midler, Berry Gordy, Justino Díaz, and Lorne Michaels. Earlier this year the music icon was named MusiCares Person of the Year for the Grammy Awards. The Mitchell “renaissance” of 2022 hasn’t come out of thin air. After 23 years of relative seclusion (with an ad hoc performance here and there), Joni Mitchell was back on the road. That all changed on 21 October 2022 when Brandi Carlile announced that Mitchell would headline a show at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington state on 10 June 2023 as part of a two-night engagement titled “Echoes Through the Canyon”. A massive Mitchell fan myself, I’d made peace with the fact that I’d probably never get to see her in concert. That aneurysm, which forced Mitchell to learn to walk and talk again, seemed to confirm the end of her performing career - from which she’d already been retired for over two decades. It was the first time Mitchell played at the venue since 1969 and the first time she’d performed on any stage since a brain aneurysm nearly took her life in 2015. In July, the legendary artist stunned music lovers worldwide when she performed at the Newport Folk Festival with Brandi Carlile and a group of musician friends. For Joni Mitchell fans, 2022 has been a big year.
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