The Songs Of Joni Mitchell

An unorthodox musician from the start, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's style of composing, performing, and of playing (and tuning) the guitar is unique. In the framework of sexual difference and the gendered discourses of rock this immediately begs the questions: are Mitchell's songs specifically feminine and, if so, to what extent and why? Anne Karppinen addresses this question focusing on the kind of music and lyrics Mitchell writes, the representation of men and women in her lyrics, how her style changes and evolves over time, and how cultural context affects her writing. Linked to this are the concepts of subjectivity and authorship: when a singer-songwriter sings a song in the first person, about whom are they actually singing? Mitchell offers a fascinating study, for the songs she writes and sings are intricately woven from the strands of her own life. Using methods from critical discourse analysis, this book examines recorded performances of songs from Mitchell's first nine studio albums, and the contemporary reviews of these albums in Anglo-American rock magazines. In one of the only books to discuss Mitchell's recorded performances, with a focus that extends beyond the seminal album Blue, Karppinen explores the craft of Mitchell's songwriting and her own attitudes towards it, as well as the dynamics and politics of rock criticism in the 1960s and 1970s more generally.

Joni Mitchell is one of the foremost singer-songwriters of the late twentieth century. Yet despite her reputation, influence, and cultural importance, a detailed appraisal of her musical achievement is still lacking. Whitesell presents a through exploration of Mitchell's musical style, sound, and structure in order to evaluate her songs from a musicological perspective. His analyses are conceived within a holistic framework that takes account of poetic nuance, cultural reference, and stylistic evolution over a long, adventurous career. Mitchell's songs represent a complex, meticulously crafted body of work. The Music of Joni Mitchell offers a comprehensive survey of her output, with many discussions of individual songs, organized by topic rather than chronology. Individual chapters each explore a different aspect of her craft, such as poetic voice, harmony, melody, and large-scale form. A separate chapter is devoted to the central theme of personal freedom, as expressed through diverse symbolic registers of the journey quest, bohemianism, creative license, and spiritual liberation. Previous accounts of Mitchell's songwriting have tended to favor her poetic vision, expansive verse structures, and riveting vocal delivery. Whitesell fills out this account with special attention to musical technique, showing how such traits as complex or conflicting sonorities, dualities of harmonic mode, dialectical tensions of texture and register, intricately layered instrumental figuration, and a variable vocal persona are all essential to her distinctive identity as a songwriter. The Music of Joni Mitchell develops a set of conceptual tools geared specifically to Mitchell's songs, in order to demonstrate the extent of her technical innovation in the pop song genre, to give an account of the formal sophistication and rhetorical power characterizing her work as a whole, and to provide grounds for the recognition of her intellectual stature as a composer within her chosen field.

A gorgeous compendium of Joni Mitchell's handwritten lyrics and drawings, originally handcrafted as a gift for a select group of friends in 1971 and now available to the public for the first time In 1971, as her album Blue topped charts around the world, Joni Mitchell crafted one hundred copies of Morning Glory on the Vine as a holiday gift for her closest friends. For this stunningly beautiful book, Joni hand-wrote an exquisite selection of her own lyrics and poems and illustrated them with more than thirty of her original pictures. Handcrafted, signed, and numbered in Los Angeles, the existing copies of this labor of love have rarely been seen in the past half-century. Now, during Joni's seventy-fifth birthday year, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings will be widely available for the first time. In this faithfully reproduced edition, Joni's best-loved lyrics and poems spill across the pages in her own elegant script. The lively, full-color drawings depict a superb array of landscapes, still lifes, portraits of friends, self-portraits, innovative abstractions, and more. All the artwork from the original book is included, along with several additional pictures that Joni drew of her friends from the same period. Finally, the refreshed volume features an original introduction written by Joni. Morning Glory on the Vine is a gorgeous and intimate keepsake and an invitation to explore anew the dazzling, visionary world of Joni Mitchell.

"She was like a storm." —Leonard Cohen Joni Mitchell may be the most influential female recording artist and composer of the late twentieth century. In Reckless Daughter, the music critic David Yaffe tells the remarkable, heart-wrenching story of how the blond girl with the guitar became a superstar of folk music in the 1960s, a key figure in the Laurel Canyon music scene of the 1970s, and the songwriter who spoke resonantly to, and for, audiences across the country. A Canadian prairie girl, a free-spirited artist, Mitchell never wanted to be a pop star. She was nothing more than “a painter derailed by circumstances,” she would explain. And yet, she went on to become a talented self-taught musician and a brilliant bandleader, releasing album after album, each distinctly experimental, challenging, and revealing. Her lyrics captivated listeners with their perceptive language and naked emotion, born out of Mitchell’s life, loves, complaints, and prophecies. As an artist whose work deftly balances narrative and musical complexity, she has been admired by such legendary lyricists as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and beloved by such groundbreaking jazz musicians as Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock. Her hits—from “Big Yellow Taxi” to “Both Sides, Now” to “A Case of You”—endure as timeless favorites, and her influence on the generations of singer-songwriters who would follow her, from her devoted fan Prince to Björk, is undeniable. In this intimate biography, drawing on dozens of unprecedented in-person interviews with Mitchell, her childhood friends, and a cast of famous characters, Yaffe reveals the backstory behind the famous songs—from Mitchell’s youth in Canada, her bout with polio at age nine, and her early marriage and the child she gave up for adoption, through the love affairs that inspired masterpieces, and up to the present—and shows us why Mitchell has so enthralled her listeners, her lovers, and her friends. Reckless Daughter is the story of an artist and an era that have left an indelible mark on American music.

Joni Mitchell Complete So Far contains 167 songs spanning her entire career, transcribed accurately and including the authentic tunings Joni explored throughout her artistic development. Titles: * All I Want * Amelia * The Arrangement * (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care * Bad Dreams * Banquet * Barangrill * Be Cool * The Beat of Black Wings * Big Yellow Taxi * Big Yellow Taxi (2007) * A Bird That Whistles (Corrina, Corrina) * Black Crow * Blonde in the Bleachers * Blue * Blue Boy * Blue Motel Room * The Boho Dance * Borderline * Both Sides, Now * Cactus Tree * California * Car on a Hill * Carey * A Case of You * Chelsea Morning * Cherokee Louise * Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody * The Circle Game * Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire * Come In from the Cold * Conversation * Cool Water * Court and Spark * Coyote * The Crazy Cries of Love * Dancin' Clown * The Dawntreader * Dog Eat Dog * Don Juan's Reckless Daughter * Don't Interrupt the Sorrow * Down to You * Dreamland * Edith and the Kingpin * Electricity * Ethiopia * Face Lift * Fiction * The Fiddle and the Drum * For Free * For the Roses * Free Man in Paris * Furry Sings the Blues * The Gallery * God Must Be a Boogie Man * Good Friends * Hana * Harlem in Havana * Harry's House—Centerpiece * Hejira * Help Me * The Hissing of Summer Lawns * How Do You Stop * I Don't Know Where I Stand * I Had a King * I Think I Understand * If * If I Had a Heart * Impossible Dreamer * In France They Kiss on Main Street * Jericho * Judgement of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig's Tune) * The Jungle Line * Just Like This Train * Ladies' Man * Ladies of the Canyon * Lakota * Last Chance Lost * The Last Time I Saw Richard * Lead Balloon * Lesson in Survival * Let the Wind Carry Me * Little Green * Love * Love Puts on a New Face * Lucky Girl * The Magdalene Laundries * Man from Mars * Man to Man * Marcie * Michael from Mountains * Moon at the Window * Morning Morgantown * My Best to You * My Old Man * My Secret Place * Nathan la Franeer * Night in the City * Night of the Iguana * Night Ride Home * No Apologies * Not to Blame * Nothing Can Be Done * Number One * Off Night Backstreet * One Week Last Summer * The Only Joy in Town * Otis and Marlena * Overture—Cotton Avenue * Paprika Plains * Passion Play (When All the Slaves Are Free) * People's Parties * The Pirate of Penance * The Priest * Rainy Night House * Raised on Robbery * Ray's Dad's Cadillac * The Reoccurring Dream * Refuge of the Roads * River * Roses Blue * Same Situation * See You Sometime * Sex Kills * Shades of Scarlett Conquering * Shadows and Light * Shine * Shiny Toys * The Silky Veils of Ardor * The Sire of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song) * Sisotowbell Lane * Slouching Towards Bethlehem * Smokin' (Empty, Try Another) * Snakes and Ladders * Solid Love * Song for Sharon * Song to a Seagull * Songs to Aging Children Come * Stay in Touch * A Strange Boy * Strong and Wrong * Sunny Sunday * Sweet Bird * Talk to Me * Taming the Tiger * Tax Free * The Tea Leaf Prophecy (Lay Down Your Arms) * That Song About the Midway * This Flight Tonight * This Place * The Three Great Stimulants * Tin Angel * Trouble Child * Turbulent Indigo * Twisted * Two Grey Rooms * Underneath the Streetlight * Urge for Going * Wild Things Run Fast * Willy * The Windfall (Everything for Nothing) * The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey * Woman of Heart and Mind * Woodstock * You Dream Flat Tires * You Turn Me on I'm a Radio * Yvette in English

Essays by writers, friends and collaborators of Joni Mitchell celebrating her work and its impact on their lives.

A comprehensive study of the style and structure of her songs, analysing her technique, poetic nuances and cultural references.

In her long career, Canadian songstress Joni Mitchell has been hailed as everything from 1960s folk icon to 20th century cultural figure, artistic iconoclast to musical heroine, extreme romantic confessor to outspoken commentator and lyrical painter. While some criticised what they viewed as her seeming dismissal of commercial considerations, she simply viewed her trajectory as that of any artist serious about the integrity of their work. But whatever musical position she took, she was always one step ahead of the game, making eclectic and innovative music. Albums like The Ladies Of The Canyon, Blue, Hejira and Mingus helped define each era of the 1970s, as she moved from exquisitely pitched singer songwriter material towards jazz. Her past influence was obvious in the 1980s when hoards of assuming successors (some highly respectable) gathered her exotic breadcrumbs with a view to distilling their illusive compounds, while Joni simultaneously forged ahead. This book revisits her studio albums in detail from 1968's Song to a Seagull to 2007's Shine, providing anecdote and insight into the recording sessions, an in depth analysis along with a complimentary level of lyrical and instrumental examination.