The artist Joni Mitchell called her musical “baby”
The music Joni Mitchell made wasn’t always intended for a mainstream audience.
She had flirted with becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, but compared to the other major artists in her field, it’s not like she was looking to find hits everywhere she went, either. IT was better for her to follow her muse every single time she made a record, but while it might not have been taken seriously, it was a lot more vindicating when other artists picked up where she left off.
Because as much as Mitchell liked the idea of working in genres like jazz, it was always going to be a tough sell trying to get the mainstream on board with that kind of pivot. Jazz was never meant to be the most popular genre in the world, but even if she didn’t have the same sort of draw as the other singer-songwriters of her day when making albums with Charles Mingus, it’s not like she was going to be persuaded into going somewhere else.
She was fiercely proud of every single genre switch she made, and when looking at her career trajectory, it was only natural that she start working with the best of the best in her field. There was no stopping her once she got her bearings on the genre of records like Hejira, but little did she know that people like Sting started to have the exact same idea when he started to work outside The Police.
There were a million roads for the bassist to go down when Synchronicity came out, but instead of going back to the same kind of music that he knew would sell, The Dream of the Blue Turtles felt much different from anything else he had been writing. Each song felt like a sonic adventure in many respects, and when looking through the rest of his solo catalogue, nothing that he did was meant to fit into the traditional pop single format.
That’s not to say he didn’t have hits. Tunes like ‘Fields of Gold’ will be remembered forever as pieces of finely crafted art half the time, but when looking at what Mitchell had been doing, it’s hard not to look at what Sting was doing and not see it as a natural extension of her version of adult contemporary. You’d think that would make her a little bit jaded, but she could only be thankful that there was someone still listening.
When talking about people like Sting, Mitchell always felt that the former Police frontman was like her musical offspring in lots of ways, saying, “To me, Sting is like James’s [Taylor] and my baby [laughs]. In all fairness, let me say if you are really a musician – and not just a pop star – sooner or later you are going to want to play with the greatest. Why not play with the best musicians available, right?”
And when you look at Sting’s career trajectory, it’s actually got more than a few similarities in the way that he approached the size and scope of his music. Even though his songs tended to branch out into different territories and become massive exercises, there’s a certain cut-off point when he stopped worrying about becoming one of the biggest rock stars in the world and focused on being able to write good songs for the rest of his life.
Because if you look at both of them together, Sting and Mitchell knew that all of their heroes didn’t get to where they are by playing the industry game at every single turn. They simply wanted to be the best artists they could be, and if that happened to line up with the rest of the world, that was good enough for them.
