The Album That Changed My Life: Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’
To anyone who’s unfamiliar with Joni Mitchell, she is a Canadian singer songwriter whose style would best be described as a mixture of folk-pop, with some jazz influences - other than that I find it quite hard to pin her down to certain genre. She’s been singing since the 1960s and has released 19 studio albums in that time. She is considered to be one of the most influential figures in popular music over the past 60 years.
If anyone’s ever had a conversation with me about music, they will know that this album is my number one. If asked ‘What’s your favourite album of all time?’ which, let’s face it, is a savage question to ask any music lover, I will undoubtedly answer with this one. But why? What is it about this collection of 10 songs, lasting just 36 minutes, that has me hooked?
Hearing it when I was young might be one of the reasons. I first heard it when I was 15 and it was given to me by my mum. For no other reason than wanting to expand my musical enjoyment beyond early 2000s artists (although I won’t hear a bad word against said artists), she gave me ‘Blue’ and ‘The Best of The Kinks’. I loved The Kinks and still do, but it was ‘Blue’ that really stuck with me. To put it simply I had not heard music like it.
What made it different for me - and still does - is how stripped back but beautifully detailed it is at the same time. Each song consists of Joni Mitchell with a guitar/piano, with occasional drums thrown in here and there. Then, layered on top of this simple set up, is her brilliantly clear voice and lyrics that tell a complex story in such a concise way; it makes you stop and stand open-mouthed.
On track one for example, ‘All I Want’, has her singing and playing the piano (with James Taylor guesting on a guitar) and launches into her story about wanting to understand what life is about and willing a relationship to work:
‘I am on a lonely road and I am travelling, looking for the key to set me free. Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unravelling...and it undoes all the joy that could be. I wanna have fun, I wanna shine like the sun, I want to be the one that you want to see, I want to knit you a sweater, wanna write you a love letter, I want to make you feel better, I want to make you feel free.’
For me, that is a perfect pocket-sized story about finding yourself, trying to fend off negativity that can come your way, and wanting to be so in love that you are prepared to give it your all - and that’s just one verse.
Throughout the album, her lyrics really pack a punch and they are so precise and filled to the brim with detail, character and brilliant tales. These, mixed with the melody that rides up and down the scales fearlessly, pretty much sums up why I’m so obsessed with this album.
I also love how you never stay in one place when you listen to the album. It weaves through life's different moments and it feels like she’s taking you with her as she tries to work it all out. Travel in fact is a big part of the album, across the various songs you are transported to Crete (inspired by her time spent living with a cave-dwelling hippie community there) and she talks of going to Amsterdam and Rome, to California, France, Spain, she dreams of Canada and we continue to fly over Las Vegas and then she reminisces about meeting someone in Detroit. Not a bad stretch for such a short album.
For all these journeys, it is home that is a thread that runs throughout. ‘California’ is all about her love for the state where she feels at home creatively That pull of the familiar comforts her and provides her with company when she feels alone. Then there’s the domestic home that she experiences with a partner, where - when he’s gone - ‘the bed’s too big, the frying pan’s too wide’. That sense of home and belonging, mixed with the uncertainty of being young and weaving your way around what life hurls at you - with the emotions you feel along the way - are all the things that bewitched me when I was young, and still do today.
I listened to it again a number of times before writing this article to see if I could hear new things and relate to it differently by listening harder. The truth is, I know every single word of every song on the album. The lyrics have been hotwired into my brain from the age of 15 (that’s not to say that hasn’t happened with other songs I heard around that age, for starters I’m looking at you Craig David ‘Seven Days), but seriously, I know them all. So, when I hear it normally I sing along word for word and feel all the emotions I’ve always felt, feeling connected to the bits that I always have, so it’s been wonderful to listen with different ears.
Certain songs have stuck out more for me this time round such as ‘Little Green’, the insanely touching song about her secretly putting her baby girl up for adoption. In just 3 mins 28 seconds she conveys the loss, the love, the situation and all with a melancholy but still hopeful harmony: ‘Child with a child pretending, weary of lies you are sending home, so you sign all the papers in the family name, you’re sad and you’re sorry but you’re not ashamed, Little Green have a happy ending.’ I don’t think that I fully digested what the song was actually saying. The intricate lyrics about love and relationships in ‘All I Want’ and the excited nervousness she feels in ‘This Flight Tonight’ both gave me new feels upon listening intently this time round. It’s testimony to the fact that her songs can mean different things to you at different phases of your life, it’s generous in that way.
So, I’m going to need to wrap this up otherwise you’ll be growing grey hairs by the time I’m finished. This album has changed my life because it taught me that music can catapult you into other worlds and other lives; lives you’ve lived, are yet to and those you will never experience. The lyrics touched me - I remember scrabbling to find a notepad when I was a teen to scribble down words and phrases that impacted me. Nearly 20 years later I’m still doing it, but the words and phrases I’m writing down are different. By knowing every key change, every rhythm and all the beautiful lyrics I feel so lucky that it’s all buried within me, like treasure that I can dig out and sing at the top of my lungs as soon as I press play.
Written by Charlotte Livingstone
Charlotte is a music obsessed south Londoner who loves dancing, crosswords, The Chase (too much) and getting out and about. She writes for a living as a Digital Content Editor and is loving being able to write for fun with The Everyday.