Is Joni Mitchell a confessional songwriter, despite what she says?
Since the heady days of the counterculture, Joni Mitchell has been revered as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Celebrated as an unwavering iconoclast who never fails to fascinate, her back catalogue contains flecks of everything from folk to jazz. Her dedication to achieving full artistic enlightenment is admirable, and this commitment to following her own sense of the world is admirable.
Mitchell is a notable case as, alongside being a genius musician, she’s also a real character who has consistently refused to conform – as is expected of someone who was once such an essential symbol of the counterculture. At many points in her career, her character has been more of a talking point than her music, which is interesting when you note just how coveted her artistic efforts are by some.
Unsurprisingly, Mitchell has provided many hot takes over the years that range from the agreeable to the comprehensively questionable. Perhaps the most intriguing came in 1997 when Morrissey interviewed her for Rolling Stone. The former Smiths frontman told her that her music is inherently confessional, yet the Canadian songstress defiantly replied: “I don’t think of myself as confessional. That’s a name that was put on me”.
This was strange given that Mitchell’s oeuvre contains more confessional themes and moments than not. However, going against the grain – as usual – she provided a somewhat controversial example of why she believes her work isn’t confessional: “The confessional poets like (Sylvia) Plath, whom I read later when they started calling me confessional, most of their stuff seemed contrived to me and not as greatly honest as it was touted to be.”
Mitchell’s assertion is mystifying because her work, particularly that of her most famous records such as Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, Court and Spark and Hejira, are all largely comprised of autobiographical or confessional moments. This is to such a great extent that she is almost universally hailed as the definitive confessional songwriter, beating the likes of Nick Drake and Neil Young to the top spot. Of course, this is not the only element of her canon, but it makes up the greatest part.
Yes, as she says, ‘confessional’ is a tag that other people have bestowed upon her, but this isn’t unfounded; it’s a reputation she carved out for herself by writing tracks such as ‘River’ and ‘Coyote’, as well as much of her work having a melancholic sound.
It is certain that Mitchell doesn’t want us to concentrate on this aspect of her work and that, for her, we’re better off talking about moments such as the experimental Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter where she really scratched her artistic itch.
For instance, take the following comment on the Don Juan’s track ‘Paprika Plains’, which reflects how she sees her work: “The Improvisational, the spontaneous aspect of this creative process – still as a poet – is to set words to the music, which is a hammer and chisel process. Sometimes it flows, but a lot of times it’s blocked by concept. And if you’re writing free consciousness – which I do once in a while just to remind myself that I can, you know, because I’m fitting little pieces of this puzzle together – the end result must flow as if it was spoken for the first time”.
However, the dye was cast long before that record. This type of elongated explanation doesn’t excuse the fact that tracks such as ‘Paprika Plains’ do not rank highly in her oeuvre in comparison to her more introspective pieces of work. She’d hate to hear this, but most people actually covet her work because of the confessional side, as symbolised by the iconic Emma Watson scene in Love Actually. This is ironic, as even the song that is used in the scene, ‘Both Sides, Now’, which is based on the passage of a novel, still contains a markedly confessional angle.
Returning back to the Morrissey interview, she followed up her argument with another point that unwittingly admitted that she is confessional. “The point is not to confess,” she said, “I’ve always used the songwriting process as a self-analysis of sorts. Like the Blue album—people were kind of shocked at the intimacy. It was peculiar in the pop arena at that time, because you were supposed to portray yourself as bigger than life. I remember thinking, ‘Well, if they’re going to worship me, they should know who they’re worshipping’.”
Whilst she is undoubtedly a talented artist, there is a substantial case to be made that Joni Mitchell is a confessional musician, and it’s strange that she’s always protested this point as it’s what she’s best at.
