‘The Sire of Sorrow’: The mystery of Joni Mitchell’s darkest song
I’m going to say something that I know she would inevitably hate, but there are times when Joni Mitchell really is like Shakespeare.
There are countless examples one could point to in illustrating this point, but can I draw your attention to ‘The Sire of Sorrow’? No, it may not be one of the songwriter’s most well-known ditties, but in terms of the power of her words and the feelings they evoke, there are few more stirring ballads in her back catalogue.
The song reads almost in the style of a tragic Shakespearean verse, with the opening lines lamenting, “Let me speak let me spit out my bitterness/ Born of grief and nights without sleep and festering flesh/ Do you have eyes?/ Can you see like mankind sees?” A wealth of deep pain and hurt is more than evident, but it also begs more questions than it answers.
If there is one thing Mitchell is known for, of course, it’s the fact that she is classically elusive and guarded about her work. ‘The Sire of Sorrow’ may be a complex lyrical mystery to untangle, but she’s not going to offer any help or clues in that regard. The listener is very much left to their own devices, and forced to figure out a meaning for themselves.
For some, that may prove too much of an impossible puzzle to crack, but for Mitchell diehards the world over, it simply adds to the enigma of what is already a pretty impenetrable artist and woman. Her pain, heartbreak, and indeed sorrow are difficult to hear, but they also serve as a key to unlocking her greatest lyrical talents.
There is, naturally, no definitive way to assess what the song means, but a few elements are particularly striking. It’s a seven-minute acoustic opus that charts every possible emotion on a journey of suffering: panic, desperation, solemnity and resignation. It depicts an intensely physical, bodily feeling, possibly as a reckoning to some form of disease or illness.
At other points, she enters into a back-and-forth with additional singers, known as antagonists, presenting her as the weary and battle-worn hero of the story, and indeed her own life at large. The timing of a song like ‘The Sire of Sorrow’ was also important to consider – the album it came from, Turbulent Indigo, came at the end of her marriage to Larry Klein.
In this sense, lyrics like “You make everything I dread and everything I fear come true” could also be seen as the notion of fear permeating into her imminent single self, finding out what it means to be truly independent after being unused to it for so long. Regardless of any situation, however, this was a woman in abject pain.
It is undoubtedly one of Mitchell’s darkest sonic efforts because of this, whether through the lens of illness, divorce, or any other form of suffering. 30 years on from the sunshine of the ‘60s, things had certainly become a whole lot bleaker – but, if there was anything Mitchell could be trusted to do despite it all, it would be to create a true masterpiece from the ashes.
