Authentic artistry: Joni Mitchell names the most “natural” singers
If there is one consistency in Joni Mitchell’s songwriting, it’s her unflinching authenticity. Her lyrics are akin to diary entries, albeit those of a poet, while her soft strums provide the blank pages for their ink to sink into. As she details themes of love and of loss, of freedom and of wanderings, she does so with an unparalleled honesty and vulnerability that has earned her the admiration of generations of listeners.
Imbuing her work with this authenticity has always been a primary focus of Mitchell’s. In interviews throughout her career, she can often be found professing her admiration for original artistry, reiterating her desire to achieve this, and even throwing criticism at those who didn’t. She was, however, also willing to acknowledge the parts of her own career where she hadn’t been quite as authentic as she would have liked.
“The things that I look back on and sort of shrug off, maybe in a weak moment grimace over,” she once admitted during a conversation with Rolling Stone, “are the parts when I see myself imitating something else. Affectations as opposed to style.” She went on to cite Clouds, her sophomore album, as an example of when she strayed from authentic artistry.
Mitchell was particularly disappointed with the affectations of her vocal delivery on the record, which she picked up from working with Crosby, Stills and Nash. To Mitchell, authenticity was an essential part of excellence in singing, something she did not believe she quite achieved on Clouds. “A great singer would sing closer to his or her own speaking voice,” she declared.
The folk legend illustrated her point by naming three esteemed singers she considered to harness that natural quality. Her first pick was perhaps her most obvious – jazz singer Billie Holiday. Lending her playful, elongated vocals to twinkling piano compositions in the 1940s, Holiday forged a place as one of the most recognisable voices in music history. She’s also one of the most natural.
Decades after her voice first hit jukeboxes and radios, the smooth authenticity of her voice still shines through her recordings on enduring tracks like ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Solitude’. As she plays around with lyrics, always delivering them at her own pace with little consideration for the music surrounding them, she affords the lyrics a real, genuine quality.
Holiday wasn’t the only singer Mitchell considered to achieve excellence through their natural tones. She also shared her admiration for singer Maria Callas, who gave her wavering vocals to some of the most enduring compositions in the opera realm. Her recordings of Georges Bizet’s Carmen push her vocals to impossible heights, and yet they’re still full of feeling.
The final singer to earn Mitchell’s admiration was perhaps the most unexpected: The Doobie Brothers’ keyboardist and vocalist Michael McDonald. Sitting in a completely different realm to Holiday or Callas, the authenticity of McDonald’s voice thrives amidst the wholesome soft rock of his band rather than soaring over jazz pianos.
Though Mitchell didn’t think she achieved the same natural singing excellence on her second album, she certainly did show off her authentic singing skills throughout her career. On tracks like the breathless ‘Help Me’ and the devotional ‘A Case of You’, her vocals ache with the feeling of her words, as natural and vulnerable as any of the singers she admires.
