The songs Joni Mitchell used to air her grievances
Joni Mitchell is widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters in history. Managing to articulate deep and challenging feelings with ease, she never avoided darkness while penning some of the most beautiful songs ever written. Often, Mitchell’s songs were used to air and expel grievances.
A favourite lyricist of so many icons like Prince, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, the Canadian musician is written into the history books as a clear leader. Her confessional songwriting has inspired a new generation of writers, empowering them to document their lives.
Mitchell would cover the bad and the good in equal measure. Writing on topics like love, loss, the music industry as a whole, and political and social events, she didn’t shy away from any feelings. The singer used her music to get her feelings out, releasing any pent-up upset or anger in tracks that were sometimes incredibly cutting or brutal towards their subject matter.
After her breakout in the mid-1960s, Mitchell was prolific. Across her 19 studio albums, her sound continuously evolved to suit her current mood and identity. Documenting her life through songs, there were plenty of downs as well as ups. Using her songwriting as a way to work through or air her grievance, these songs, in particular. are savage.
Songs Joni Mitchell used to air grievances:
‘Ethiopia’
Mitchell regularly turned her pen to social and political events. On ‘The Magdalene Laundries’, she tackles the shocking revelations of religious abuse and murder in Ireland. Equally, ‘Ethiopia’ airs more political grievances. On the 1985 album Dog Eat Dog, the track deals with famine and consumerism.
Turning her lyrical focus away from her own life and toward Africa, ‘Ethiopia’ zooms in on the need for global, collective support. Mitchell delivers a cutting take on celebrities using tragedy to their own benefit, writing, “Every Sunday on T.V. / You suffer with such dignity / A T.V. star with a P.R. smile / Calls your baby ‘it’ while strolling / Through your tragic trials.” Dealing with the gripping poverty in the East African country, it’s one of the singer’s most powerful political cuts.
‘For The Roses’
By 1972, Joni Mitchell was ready to quit music. She’d had enough of the constant mistreatment, the battles against label executives and the way female artists were constantly disrespected and disregarded in comparison to their male peers. Experiences like the one she had with Jann Wenner had sickened Mitchell off the life she’d worked so hard to get. She decided to pen her goodbye.
“Remember the days when you used to sit / And make up your tunes for love,” Mitchell sings in this sad ballad, mourning her old hopes and dreams. Of the track, she said, “That was my first farewell to show business. I was in Canada, and I had decided to quit show business and get away from all the pressures.”
She added, “To me, this was an unfair, crooked business and it has nothing to do with real talent.” Luckily, she got the strength to come back after getting these feelings out.
‘Lead Balloon’
“‘Kiss my ass,’ I said / and I threw my drink,” Mitchell proclaims at the start of ‘Lead Balloon’. On her 1998 album Taming The Tiger, the singer airs her grievances about a feud over 20 years in the making. Recounting her experience with Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, Mitchell doesn’t hold back on her feelings towards the magazine boss. After he deemed her “Old Lady Of The Year” in 1971, disrespecting her position as a highly influential artist, Mitchell had a hatred for Wenner. She didn’t hide her feelings, telling the press in 1978, “I have a personal grudge against mister Jann Wenner. He’s very irresponsible.”
The insults continued. In 1983, the magazine listed her as one of “the most overrated people in America”. By 1998, Mitchell had had enough. On ‘Lead Balloon’, she tears into Wenner, the music industry and gender inequality as a whole. Singing, “An angry man is just an angry man / But an angry woman, bitch,” she perfectly articulates the double standard of women’s existence in a male world.
‘Sex Kills’
Another grievance of Mitchell’s was the way society handles the topics of sex and violence. On ‘Sex Kills’, she puts it quite plainly as she sings, “And sex sells everything / sex kills.” A broad and critical view of the modern age, she considers everything from the use of antidepressants, oil spills, gun violence and rape culture.
This spiralling track is one of her most observant songs. Analysing the world, she found herself in and its stark difference from the atmosphere she knew and loved of the 1960s, Mitchell’s take on the 1990s is a pessimistic one.
