The one reason Joni Mitchell believes that “insecure” Janis Joplin “hated” her
Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin have both left an uncompromising, trailblazing mark on the world of music.
While it feels as though they should have been close associates spurring each other on to greatness, both had a competitive edge that ruled out that idyllic possibility. To get to the top, no matter whether the profession is the music industry or chess, then, it’s necessary to have that win-at-all-costs mindset.
As much as music is an art rather than a sport, rivalries have existed forever, whether this be The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the 1960s or Drake and Kendrick Lamar in the 2020s. Artists naturally want to be in the top position in their field, even if it means trampling over people who they’d conceivably consider friends.
While Mitchell and Joplin didn’t write songs about each other or use the press to whip up a sensationalist frenzy regarding their rivalry, it wasn’t rosy behind closed doors. At the time, opportunities for women in music were limited, and the pair were fighting for the same position in the industry, which led to tension behind closed doors.
Despite their vast musical differences, Joplin and Mitchell were often mentioned in the same conversations, which is unlikely to have been the case if they were of a different sex. The music industry, at this time, was a relatively small place, which meant they did cross paths, but it never evolved into a friendship or musical collaboration.
It wasn’t only Joplin that Mitchell had a frosty relationship with; it was a similar story with Joan Baez. Speaking to Mojo in 2008, Mitchell explained her problems with the pair of previously mentioned musicians and why she felt they hated her with a passion. However, Mitchell also understood that this wasn’t to do with anything she said or did.
Instead, the singer-songwriter was under the belief that this spoke about a wider issue with women in the music industry, who are forced to fight for the same spot.
In the interview, Mitchell said of Joplin: “She was very competitive with me, very insecure. She was the queen of rock’n’roll [one year], and then Rolling Stone made me the Queen of Rock’ n’ Roll, and she hated me after that.”
She then explained how it wasn’t only Joplin who was in the music industry with this competitive mindset, painting a picture of a dog-eat-dog world, adding, “I always thought the women of song don’t get along, and I don’t know why that is. I had a hard time with Laura Nyro also, and Joan Baez would have broken my leg if she could, or at least that’s the way it felt as a person coming out. I never felt that same sense of competition from men.”
During her short career, Joplin never spoke publicly about Mitchell. Therefore, verifying whether she genuinely hated the singer is impossible, but that’s how Mitchell was made to feel in her company.
In a perfect world, the two musical icons should never have been in competition, and history has proven that there was more than enough room for them to exist independently. Thankfully, considerable progress has been made in the music industry compared with the ’60s in terms of equality and artists being judged exclusively on artistic merit.
Nevertheless, women, despite being the dominant gender in the charts by a distance, are undoubtedly still pitted against one another in a way that doesn’t happen to their male counterparts.
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