The Joni Mitchell song written about Edith Piaf
Joni Mitchell’s songwriting largely centres around her own life, but that’s not exclusively the case. On one occasion, Mitchell looked further afield for inspiration when she explored the tragic tale of Edith Piaf, which provided the topic for ‘Edith And The Kingpin’.
The track featured on 1975’s Hissing On The Summer and allowed Mitchell to get inside Edith’s character, a person she greatly admired. Piaf was born in 1915 in Paris and made a name for herself as an artist who was expressive about the pain she suffered, which fuelled her songwriting. She was an open book who lived life in the fast lane, which ultimately cost Piaf her life at 47 when she died of liver failure.
Piaf once said of her frivolous, hedonistic lifestyle: “I was hungry, I was cold but I was also free. Free not to get up in the morning, not to go to bed at night, free to get drunk if I like, free to dream…to hope.”
Following the end of the Second World War, Piaf began touring on an international scale and became a name across America and Europe. However, it was Paris where she was The Queen, and over her career, Piaf took to the stage on several occasions at the famed Paris Olympia, which became her spiritual home.
When Piaf died, so did a part of Paris, and thousands of mourners took to the streets to pay their respects to her. Fittingly, the singer’s final words before departing were, “Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for.” Although Piaf was 47 when she tragically died, the Parisian did more in her time on earth than most people cram into their lifetime.
The life story of Piaf only tells half the tale of ‘Edith and The Kingpin’, with a local pimp from Vancouver inspiring the rest of the track. Mitchell saw the similarities between these two characters and decided to combine their accounts to create a new narrative that saw their lives intertwine.
In 2008, Mitchell explained to Mojo: “Sometimes you write about the exact thing you saw, but other times you take something that happened over here and put it with something over there. In ‘Edith And The Kingpin,’ part of it is from a Vancouver pimp I met and part of it is Edith Piaf. It’s a hybrid, but all together it makes a whole truth.”
It’s a masterclass in storytelling which tackles these two remarkable stories and knits them together to create a piece of fiction. In the final verse, Mitchell sings, “Edith and the kingpin, Each with charm to sway, Are staring eye to eye, They dare not look away, You know they dare not look away.”
Piaf was a pioneering figure who changed how women were perceived in the music industry, and she walked so artists of Mitchell’s generation could run. Listen below to ‘Edith and The Kingpin’.
