The most heartbreaking lyric Joni Mitchell ever wrote: “Music was her way of processing”
When Joni Mitchell was talking to the property caretaker in the building she was living in, he asked her why she only wrote sad music.
“He said, ‘You’re a cheerful person, Joni,’” she recalled. “‘But you write all these melancholy songs. I think it’s because you write them at night. Why don’t you try writing a song in the daylight?’”
He certainly had a point. While there are many facets to Mitchell as a songwriter, there is no escaping the fact that she does tend to write songs that lean more on the sad side. She didn’t do this in the hope of pulling on the heartstrings of her listeners, though; she did this because she had lived quite a difficult life, and therefore would write songs which were a reflection of it.
David Crosby dated Joni Mitchell for a while, and during that period, he found out a lot about the struggles she faced within her life and how her music became a way for processing that. “She was exciting and turbulent and fun, and we all loved her – yet I don’t think she was ever happy,” said Crosby.
Adding, “She’d been through polio, the marriage to Chuck Mitchell and giving up a child, and music was her way of processing this. It could be difficult to be around her because she’d have you laughing or crying real tears in the same half an hour, like her music. It’s genuinely who she is.”
Some of her saddest songs, which acted as a true reflection of the pain that she had come across in her life, were featured on her acclaimed album Blue. This is an example of some of the most beautiful songwriting the world has ever heard, as Mitchell combines lyricism, guitar playing, and her stunning vocals to tap into emotions that reside deep within the psyche of her fans.
“We were a couple for two years – and I watched her write many of the songs on Blue. She didn’t finish it until after we parted,” said Graham Nash, reflecting on his time with Mitchell before discussing the songs she wrote, which were about him. “‘River’ made me sad, because it chronicled the end of our relationship, but also elated, because it was such a beautiful song and she had the courage to bare her soul, we were very much in love, I treasured that relationship.”
While songs about her crumbling relationship with Nash are sad to listen to, and you can hear the devastation in her voice, they’re not where you’ll find the most upsetting lyric on Blue, and subsequently the saddest in her entire discography. This comes in the form of ‘Little Green’, an incredibly sad song which is about Mitchell’s child, whom she had to give up for adoption.
This is always going to be a difficult decision for a mother, and it wasn’t one which Mitchell made lightly. When she fell pregnant with a child whose father didn’t want to be in the picture, she tried to make a life for herself. Mitchell did this by attempting to create what many saw as a traditional family dynamic, which essentially meant getting married and instilling normality. She tried this by marrying Chuck Mitchell, but that didn’t work out, and once the two separated, Mitchell knew it was best for her to give her child up for adoption.
“I was dirt poor. An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child,” said Mitchell when discussing her choice to give her child up for adoption. “It was difficult parting with the child, but I had to let her go.” Mitchell captured the sadness of giving up her child with some simple and yet incredibly profound lyrics on ‘Little Green’, which remain the most heartbreaking in her entire career, as she bids farewell:
“You sign all the papers in the family name, you are sad and you’re sorry but you’re not ashamed, little green have a happy ending.”
