Joni Mitchell's Blue & The Essence of Greatness

When I think about pianos in music, I think about the opening bars of “Blue” and “The Last Time I Saw Richard.” When I think about love songs, I think about “All I Want.” When I think about falsettos, I think of the opening lyrics of “Blue.” When I think about heartbreak, I think of “A Case of You.” You might be asking yourself: jeez, do you ever not think about Joni Mitchell? My answer would be: have you listened to Blue yet?

The genesis of this writing series came from a desire not to get stuck in a rut of music listening. I didn’t want to let my music listening remain too narrow and limited to just artists from the places I know well. So, this desire birthed the Music World Tour. Then I figured that the best avenue to truly dig into these records and explore them was to write about them. Writing about them would draw me in for more listens and more background and contextual research. With any luck, this will lead me to a greater understanding and appreciation for the records, the artists and bands who make them, and the people and places who introduced me to them.

I did not go far in my initial selection with Canada given its close proximity to the United States and some cultural similarities. I started off even easier by not planning any French-Canadian artist exploration, but I will be back again for another stop of the tour and that means an even deeper dig. No, I decided to start somewhere I felt comfortable. In fact, there may be no place in this world I feel more comfortable than with this record: Joni Mitchell’s Blue.

There have been many late nights when Joni’s was the only voice of comfort. I am overcome with an emotion I just can’t quite describe (yes, I can appreciate the irony of that given my current attempt to describe it). Joni sings about her experiences with a specificity and vulnerability that is nearly unmatched in its uniqueness. Yet with each passing moment, you feel all of it. All of the things that didn’t happen to you. You’re certain you also had an old man. You’ve now convinced yourself that you definitely had a wondrous but brief relationship with James Taylor. Hell, you can’t even imagine what it might be like to see Richard again.

From my first listen years and years ago, “A Case of You” immediately became a favorite. It became the track that I would listen to when I didn’t know what else to listen to. The songwriting from start to finish is as strong as you will find in any song. There is one particular stanza that has become emblematic of how I view songwriting. It isn’t just about what you write, but how it comes out. Consider:

"I remember that time you told me/You said ‘Love is touching souls’/Because part of you/Pours out of me/In these lines from time to time”

Now that you have read it, go listen to it (starting about the 2:06 mark). They are simple and profoundly written bars. The way Joni brings it to life in “A Case of You” is stunning. The subtle vibrato on ‘remember,’ the pauses after ‘You Said’ and ‘Pours,’ the falsetto on ‘Surely,’ the small vocal run on ‘touching,’ and the way she accentuates the rhyme in ‘lines…time…time.’ That’s not just writing. That’s an innate and intimate musicality and knowing how to move in and out of each line for maximum impact. Each and every time I hear those lyrics, I just stop. I stop whatever I am doing and listen.

This is a particularly ironic album to start with because even at its approaching age of 50, it is tethered to much more than just Canada. Canada is where the album starts, but it moves with Joni in her trip across Europe at the time and ends with her recording the album in Hollywood. It is further tethered to experiences in the States with tracks like “California.” It’s even instrumentally tied to yet another region in the U.S. with Joni’s use of the Appalachian dulcimer. Did I know what that was before this album? No, I didn’t. But it looks quite cool. Even cooler when it’s played. Every session musician involved in the making of the album has their origins in the United States as well (from Dallas to Boston). The lyrical connections to Canada are even a bit tenuous. The most obvious example is in “A Case of You,” as Joni belts, “I drew a map of Canada/Oh Canada.” That word has never sounded so sweet. It’s also a nice homage to the Canadian national anthem. Joni’s musical explorations and connections actually bear similarities to one of her Canadian peers, Neil Young. In fact, Neil Young is actually the next stop on the Canadian leg of the tour.

This is not the last time I will write about this album. It truly is not even the first as my girlfriend knows from my obnoxiously long text messages about this magnificent record. I continue to write and rewrite parts of this, trying to imagine how I could do this record justice. Imagining that I could possibly write something new about Blue is a fool’s errand. Chasing its essence feels the same way. I continuously come back to the core of it: What is that makes this album so great? If I could answer that question, this post would write itself. It’d be a river flowing from the technical excellence to the powerful emotionality the same way Joni does throughout Blue. This entire piece has been in service to that question of greatness. What if I did not ask the right question in the first place though? I assumed there is objectivity to its greatness. Objectivity in art is a remarkably difficult standard to ascertain. So maybe the focus is wrong. Maybe the focus should be on how much I learned about songwriting from this album. How much I learned about the ways the voice can be used as multiple instruments over just one song. How much I learned about how to listen and just be wherever and whenever you are. How much I learned about not just hearing or listening to music but feeling it.

Or maybe it is just a perfect album.