Carole King’s favourite Joni Mitchell songs of all time: “Congratulations, Joni, and thank you”
Although it’s one of the first things most people say when looking at the legacy of Carole King, she really is one of a kind. Beyond her obvious talent and the ways she basically changed the entire game for singer-songwriters, King had the one thing most of us struggle to find our whole lives: self-belief. “I was never brought up to be fearful or think I couldn’t do anything,” she once said.
In all fairness, though, King didn’t emerge as a fully formed artist ready to take on the world. Nobody has that ability, anyway, but where she differed was in her understanding of what it meant to make art that meant something. Anybody can be an exceptional writer or storyteller, but it’s making it feel worthy of listening to that becomes the real challenge.
“It wasn’t the question of whether I could write songs; it was the question of whether anyone would care,” she explained in a 2012 interview, revealing that while having the knack for it was certainly the difference between having potential and falling flat, it was also about having enough energy and enthusiasm to actually do something about it, and at 14, that’s exactly what she did. She called as many labels as possible with the hope that one would like her music.
But this kind of self-assurance was never a product of her ego. Sure, she had to have some level of confidence to be able to pull off anything in an industry set on tearing its women down, but it was also the kind that made her a sort of open book; like she knew she had something to offer to the world, but she wasn’t so closed off that it meant she wasn’t open to evolving as an artist. And this is something she learned when she first discovered Joni Mitchell.
For most people, Mitchell was the difference between losing yourself in uncertainty and letting despair guide the way: at the time Blue was released especially, the industry (and society in a general sense) felt on the precipice of something nondescript, like hanging off a cliff when the ground below is obscured by a layer of mist that makes it impossible to see where you were about to land, if you were about to land at all.
But Blue took that haze and made it something special, like she was the only person in the scene that actually knew how to do something about the strange 1960s hangover that threatened to veil the entire 1970s in a dark grey hue. For King, this was the kind of confidence she loved, the kind she probably recognised in herself; the kind that was as gorgeous and innovative sonically as it was hard-hitting about things that actually meant a hell of a lot to her, as a female songwriter and as a human being; a parent.
“When the album was released in 1971, I was blown away by Joni’s open guitar tunings, unpredictable chord changes, and amazing vocal chops that allowed her to move effortlessly from warm, rich low notes to bell-like high notes and back again,” she told The Guardian. “I loved the simplicity of her rhythmic accompaniment on piano, guitar, or dulcimer”.
Continuing, “Then I got into the lyrics. It was hard to hear her painfully honest emotions. As a young mother, I found ‘Blue’ and ‘Little Green’ especially moving, but then she’d break into something wickedly funny, as in ‘California’. The album is such a perfectly sequenced collection of inspired and well-crafted songs that it’s difficult to choose one as a favourite. I’ll just say to my sister in songwriting: ‘Congratulations, Joni, and thank you’.”
When revisiting the album, ‘Blue‘ and ‘Little Green’ no doubt offer two of the most beautiful moments, signalling everything about Mitchell’s leadership in this exact moment. Two songs that lay her soul bare, it’s no surprise why King found them so endearing, especially as someone who knows full well just what it takes to be someone who leads the charge when you’re the only one rooting for yourself.
