Hers is a singular voice: be it the piercingly clear soprano of her youth or the wise, warm husk of a life hard-fought for, there is nobody who sounds like Joni Mitchell.
There’s a singularity to her songwriting, too, the gift of a restless and curious mind who has always known that nuance is where stories begin. In honour of Mitchell’s 81st birthday on Nov. 7, CBC Music has reckoned with her tremendous catalogue and ranked her 25 best songs.
Scroll down and marvel at Mitchell’s mastery of beauty, and her decades spent turning complicated, messy and mundane truths into evocative glimpses into the art of living.
25. ‘Raised on Robbery’
Walking the line between rollicking and frenzied, “Raised on Robbery” feels like Mitchell and co. (including Robbie Robertson on electric guitar) are getting away with something impossible here — and they are, somehow stuffing four decades of music and just as many stories about a sex worker and her johns into a three-minute song.
24. ‘All I Want’
Blue opens on the hopeful note of a burgeoning relationship, as Mitchell asks, “Do you wanna take a chance on maybe finding some sweet romance with me, baby?” It’s playful and daring, unabashedly in search of an ideal love that admittedly will come at a cost.
23. ‘Urge for Going’
A song heavy with restlessness, “Urge for Going” was written in the mid-’60s before Mitchell left Canada, and was originally recorded by her friend Tom Rush. It was eventually released as a B-side to the 1972 track “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio.”
22. ‘For Free’
A striking piano arrangement underlines this seemingly simple song — a street musician who plays the clarinet “for free” — that’s really about music, capitalism, commodification, class, fame and what it costs the world when we put a price on art.
21. ‘A Chair in the Sky’
Mitchell’s 10th album, Mingus, is named for and dedicated to the legendary jazz musician, composer, producer and songwriter Charles Mingus, who died from ALS while in the process of collaborating on and recording the album with her. “A Chair in the Sky” feels like two masters in dialogue across time and space, the present and the great beyond, a chair in the sky for the icon who inspired Mitchell so much.
20. ‘Woodstock’
Mitchell wrote and released “Woodstock,” a counterculture anthem with the everlasting line “we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” on her album Ladies of the Canyon in 1970, the same year that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released their version. The kicker: Mitchell wrote it after being held back from attending the storied festival by her management, while the rock supergroup of men was allowed to go.
19. ‘Help Me’
“Help Me” hones in on the frenzied rush of falling for someone you know just isn’t good for you — the emotion riled up by the jazzy percussion and horns that set her 1974 album, Court and Spark, apart from her previous, more folk-focused records. It’s also one of her most commercially successful songs to date: the only single to crack the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 7.
18. ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’
The title track of Mitchell’s 1975 album, “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” expanded on Mitchell’s jazz-influenced work on Court and Spark while also moving “beyond personal confession into the realm of social philosophy,” as Stephen Holden wrote, describing the whole album in Rolling Stone. Eschewing any “I” statements, Mitchell opted instead to use sharp third-person narration to detail a poisoned marriage, a slinky bass guitar and groovy percussion adding to the slipperiness of perception versus reality.
17. ‘Not to Blame’
The lyrics of “Not to Blame” are a refreshingly clear indictment of men who beat women, and Mitchell refused to take any heat as people speculated as to the subject of her song — O.J. Simpson or Jackson Browne — telling MOJO in 1998, “It’s about the kind of guy who goes around battering women — and if the shoe fits, wear it, you know [laughs]?”
16. ‘You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio’
“You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio” appeared on the 1972 album For the Roses, Mitchell’s first with Asylum Records, a label helmed by David Geffen and Elliot Roberts. The two execs suggested she write a radio-friendly hit and in turn, Mitchell, who always considered herself more of an albums than a singles artist, wrote this mildly facetious track rife with radio puns.
15. ‘Free Man in Paris’
“Free Man in Paris” is another song with a Geffen connection. Mitchell wrote the 1974 track after a trip to Paris with Geffen, where the recording industry mogul finally got a chance to escape the rat race of the music biz: “I was a free man in Paris/ I felt unfettered and alive/ nobody was calling me up for favours/ no one’s future to decide.”
14. ‘Hejira’
When loosely translated from Arabic, “Hejira” means migration. It’s a fitting title for the 1976 track about placelessness, which details how Mitchell goes on an emotional expedition and finds herself. Her diaristic songwriting approach allows her to interrogate who she is and where she belongs against a scattered lyrical backdrop of trees and snow. Her voice stretches beyond the words, floating up and then unfurling as she sings, “There’s the hope and the hopelessness/ I’ve witnessed 30 years/ we’re only particles of change I know I know.”
13. ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’
The closing track on Blue recalls a conversation between two old friends, vividly illustrating the contrasting views of a hopeless romantic and a hopeless cynic. Mitchell’s sweeping piano vacillates between plaintive and hopeful as Richard argues that “all romantics meet the same fate/ some day, cynical and drunk and boring/ someone in some dark café.” But Mitchell knows that choosing darkness isn’t fatalistic: “Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away.”
12. ‘Court and Spark’
The title track of what Rolling Stone called “the first truly great pop album of 1974” sees Mitchell confronted by the courtship of someone with a “madman’s soul,” but who represents so much more: the choice between love or freedom. “And you could complete me, I’d complete you,” she sings, before finally choosing freedom.
11. ‘The Circle Game’
This gorgeous and hopeful track about growing up, from Mitchell’s 1970 album, Ladies of the Canyon, was a response to Neil Young’s sadness at aging out of his youth in his early 20s — and features backing vocals by Crosby, Stills & Nash. “So the years spin by and now the boy is 20/ though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true/ there’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty/ before the last revolving year is through,” she sings, reassuringly, on the final verse.
10. ‘Cactus Tree’
“Now she rallies her defences/ for she fears that one will ask her/ for eternity/ and she’s so busy being free,” Mitchell sings on the closing song from 1968’s Song to a Seagull, her voice soaring and dropping like the album’s titular bird following the whim of a breeze. The list of ex-lovers vying for the song’s free-spirited woman is an artist favourite — and was recently covered by Maggie Rogers at her packed Red Rocks show.
9. ‘Carey’
Inspired by her time at a commune in Greece where they played “that scratchy rock and roll/ beneath the Matala moon,” Mitchell sings about a “bright red devil” named Carey (his full name is Carey Raditz), whom she befriended. Vivid images of flowers, stars, shattered glass and flowers burst through in Mitchell’s lyrics and welcome listeners into their friendship — and by extension, her lush inner world.
8. ‘Amelia’
Nothing about this song is typical, which makes it all the more magical. For starters, it’s seven verses with no choruses, other than the refrain “Amelia, it was just a false alarm.” Over what her peers called Joni’s “weird” jazz chords but what she refers to as “chords of inquiry,” Mitchell reflects on relationships and wanderlust, all while conjuring the image of Amelia Earhart. “From one solo pilot to another,” she told the L.A. Times in 1996, adding that the song is ultimately about “the cost of being a woman and having something you must do.”
7. ‘California’
Another standout from Blue, “California” is Mitchell’s travel diary documenting a trip across Europe with stops in France, Spain and Greece. She sings fondly about her journey before she gracefully, but purposefully, calls out America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. She anchors California as her home, even with its flaws, with her twinkly vocals ringing out over a sunny melody: “All the news of home you read/ just gives you the blues.”
6. ‘Big Yellow Taxi’
The song that gave us one of Mitchell’s most iconic lines — “They paved paradise to put up a parking lot” — not only showed her starting to embrace a more pop sensibility, but also became a beacon for environmental concerns in the ’70s. It’s one of her most immediately catchy songs, having been covered more than 500 times by everyone from Bob Dylan to Janet Jackson, who sampled another iconic line: “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.”
5. ‘Coyote’
“No regrets coyote, we just come from such different sets of circumstance,” Mitchell begins on the stream-of-consciousness song “Coyote,” said to be inspired by her brief relationship with American playwright and actor Sam Shepard. The song opens Mitchell’s 1976 album, Hejira, which was written during a series of road trips and plays as an astute travelogue from that period in the singer’s life. “Coyote” in particular name-drops Baljennie, Sask., “near my old hometown,” as she sings, while capturing the feel of an open road and the pull between wild freedom and connection.
One of Mitchell’s earliest performances of “Coyote” took place a year before she released it, when she joined Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour. One evening, surrounded by Dylan and McGuinn while sitting in a candlelit room in Gordon Lightfoot’s house, Mitchell gave a stirring performance of her new song, as Dylan followed her lead on guitar. “Joni wrote this song about this tour, and on this tour, and for this tour,” McGuinn said as introduction to the performance, which came to light as part of Martin Scorsese’s 2019 documentary, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. It’s an incredible time capsule of that particular time, with those particular burgeoning legends, and set “Coyote” up to have a storied life.
4. ‘Blue’
Blue is a colour that represents both serenity and sadness, and for Mitchell, there can be a sense of peace that comes from surrendering to the darkness. The title track to her masterful 1971 album is a foggy lullaby that reminds us that we can make space to sit with our melancholy, even though we can also fill that void more easily with “acid, booze, and ass/ needles, guns and grass.” But Mitchell’s way to cope is through the vulnerable pathway of songwriting. “Songs are like tattoos,” she sings in the opening moments of the track, acknowledging that the process of opening up through music can be painful, oftentimes leaving a permanent mark. The song concludes with, “There is your song from me,” a beautiful testament to the power of music and honouring one’s feelings, no matter how dark they are.
3. ‘River’
You know when it’s bitterly cold outside and your breath leaves your body but it hangs there, suspended and still, refusing to evaporate as it starts to crystalize, a longing of exhale meets air and neither is willing to let go of what they’ve made together? This ache of knowing that forever is a fool’s promise — but wishing it was real anyway — is the feeling of “River,” the most tenderly resolute and bittersweet Christmas song of the 20th century.
Even as Mitchell wishes she had a river she could skate away on, she is hesitant to take her leave. We can hear how much she wants to stay, but we also know she must go, that she is a person who must be free. This yearning she has for something simpler and more childlike, more innocent, isn’t just vividly conveyed in Mitchell’s lyrics, but also in the cold beauty of the piano lines. Shimmering and insistent, a choreography of feelings take flight up and down the keys and do figure-eights across the ice, a solid and sturdy surface for all that’s churning below her feet.
2. ‘A Case of You’
“Just before our love got lost you said, ‘I am as constant as a northern star,'” Mitchell sings at the beginning of this heart-wrenching farewell to an ex-lover. It’s an evocative, striking line that cements any listener in the throes of Mitchell’s heartache, making it one of her most enduring songs. She oscillates between conveying wistfulness and turbulent passion, but her delivery is like a painful shot to the heart when she gets to the chorus: “Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling.” The song flows with vulnerability, coming to a head around the 3:37 mark when her voice soars as she asserts her lover is omnipresent and in her veins. It’s those raw lyrics, combined with Mitchell’s delicate playing of the Appalachian dulcimer, that give ‘A Case of You’ a particular groundedness that helps it stand out as the unlikely centrepiece of Blue. Despite receiving cover treatments from Prince, k.d. Lang, Diana Krall and others over the years, Mitchell’s version of the song towers above the rest as a result of her finding the perfect harmony between self-reflexiveness and relatability.
1. ‘Both Sides, Now’
I’ve looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose and still somehow,
It’s life’s illusions I recall,
I really don’t know life at all.
Inspiration struck Mitchell as she was reading a particular passage of Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King: as the protagonist stares out a plane window, he ponders what it means to be able to look both up and down at the clouds, to see things from both sides. Mitchell took this notion to heart, and at the young age of 23 wrote one of her most enduring songs. When introducing “Both Sides, Now” at a venue in England on Sept. 16, 1967, she said: “In this song there are only two sides to things… there’s reality and I guess what you might call fantasy. There’s enchantment and dis-enchantment, what we’re taught to believe things are and what they really are.”
Mitchell continued to perform the song on variety shows and at bars, but it was American singer-songwriter Judy Collins who first recorded it — and went on to win a Grammy for her performance. It has become Mitchell’s most covered song, with more than a thousand different renditions, but the two versions recorded by Mitchell herself tell the most illustrative story.
The year before writing “Both Sides, Now” Mitchell gave birth to a daughter, whom she ultimately had to give up for adoption. The version of “Both Sides, Now” that Mitchell recorded for her 1969 album, Clouds, is led by a guitar-strummed melody, the weight of the singer’s existential discoveries in contrast with her youthful cadence. She delved into the song again in 2000, on her album Both Sides Now. That recording, made more than 30 years after the first one, finds Mitchell seeing things from a new side. She’s backed by an orchestra, her voice is in a much lower register, and the lyrics reach new depths. It’s a grander take, but full of the same intuitive wisdom.
