Joni Mitchell explains the “great gift” of Billie Holiday
Over the years, various artists have brought the intensity and complexity of human emotion to life in their music. Arguably, the finest to do so is Joni Mitchell. A woman following her creative vision in a male-dominated world, her life and musical efforts continue to be widely influential for many.
Whether it be Spark and Court, Blue or Hejira, the number of deeply profound moments the Canadian songstress has provided are many. Despite most of them being released decades ago, the songs still pierce the soul in a way that music rarely does. While inherently candid in nature, when speaking to Morrissey for a special conversation in Rolling Stone in 1997, Mitchell denied that she is a confessional songwriter.
After Morrissey posited that much of her music is confessional, the typically polemical Mitchell replied: “I don’t think of myself as confessional. That’s a name that was put on me”. She then explained that the confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, whom she had read after fans and the media gave her the tag, seemed “contrived” to her.
Regardless of what she says, no one can doubt the emotion that imbues most of Mitchell’s best-loved work. For instance, her celebrated fourth album, 1971’s Blue, is inextricable from her love life, written just after her explosive break up with Graham Nash and during an intense romance with James Taylor. Accordingly, the notion of love is explored in ‘A Case of You’ and personal insecurities are examined in ‘This Flight Tonight’. In many other ways, the record is inextricable from her personal life.
Joni Mitchell’s distinctive style has drawn on many different places, and she notes some of the best to do it as influences. One of the most important is the late Billie Holliday, the jazz and swing singer who produced some of her era’s most heartbreaking efforts. Listing her favourite songs on her website, Mitchell picked Holiday’s ‘Solitude’ and then explained the “great gift” of the tragic heroine’s melodramatic style.
Mitchell said: “I love Billie Holiday- all phases of her. No one I know could express hurt and loss with such a good-hearted tone – not a trace of self-pity or melodrama in it. This was her great gift, and with it, she could make all those beautiful melodic ‘doormat’ sound (written by men for women to sing) sound wise. Billie’s voice here is pristine, and again I am delighted by the horn arrangement.”
Listen to ‘Solitude’ by Billie Holiday below.
