Joni Mitchell explains why Prince wasn’t an innovator: “He’s a great hybrid”
Every artist can only dream of having their sonic footprint. As much as it might be to try and go along with the times and write something that would fit on the hit parade, the best artists know how to twist the trends from those around them and create something that no one had ever heard. Although Joni Mitchell may have been looking to stretch the boundaries of the singer-songwriter genre, she thought one fellow legend never took music any further.
Then again, Mitchell never worked with the mindset of expanding the craft of music. Across albums like Blue and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Mitchell uses her guitar and voice as an emotional translator, often going outside conventional song structures to uncover the different layers of her broken heart.
While Mitchell may have channelled her muse whenever she could, she was always indebted to the massive number of players she surrounded herself with. Although she may have been thrown in with everyone from James Taylor to Crosby, Stills, and Nash in her time, Mitchell was always a fan of jazz, counting artists like Miles Davis among her favourite acts.
As she continued to evolve her sound, Mitchell would even work with various jazz musicians to get the sounds that she wanted, famously working with Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius when making albums like Hejira. Mitchell wasn’t looking to stay in one genre forever, and a young artist from Minnesota was closely taking notes.
While Prince may not have worn Mitchell’s influence on his sleeve, her knowledge of advanced harmony is embedded in his tracks. Initially performing funk music infused with a healthy dose of rock and roll, Prince would find the strength to become emotionally vulnerable by hearing Mitchell’s music, leading to him creating excellent ballads like ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘The Beautiful Ones’.
Even though Prince loved Mitchell, he was never going to stay in one genre for very long. Combing through his back catalogue, ‘The Purple One’ was known to flirt with any particular genre that suited his mood at the time, with Sign O’ the TImes being a perfect showcase of how much he could do with any genre at his disposal.
While Prince may have been one of the best musicians of his generation, Mitchell never thought he could bring music further. When asked about whether Prince innovated music, Mitchell thought that he didn’t take music to new places, telling Rolling Stone, “No. An innovator must change what went before. Charlie Parker was an innovator. Jimi Hendrix was an innovator. Miles Davis was a sound innovator. I don’t think Prince is an innovator. He’s a great hybrid.”
Despite Mitchell’s outlook on Prince, both musicians still had a healthy respect for each other. Even when releasing his posthumous albums, fans would hear Prince trying his hand at some of Mitchell’s greatest songs, playing bits and pieces of ‘A Case of You’ on Piano and a Microphone 1983. Mitchell may not have seen Prince as a game-changer in the music world, but it’s sometimes better to blend everything that’s come before to create your identity.
