‘Black Crow’: The Joni Mitchell song that inspired Kd Lang to write a classic
Kd Lang’s biggest ever single in the United States, ‘Constant Craving’, was brought to life in “a little place in Vancouver” where the Canadian singer-songwriter had been writing music and listening to Joni Mitchell. It became an instant hit and nominated Lang for multiple Grammys, while also granting her recognition outside of the pop charts.
It was Joni Mitchell’s ‘Black Crow’ that inspired Lang’s exodus from pop into more alternative and R&B sounds. The former’s spiritual lyrics and upbeat strumming pattern made the tune memorable, so much so that she told Ben Mink, her co-songwriter, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could do a song with similar, flowing open chords?”, she claimed in an interview with The Guardian in 2017, adding, “I sat down with a little Casio keyboard and the music came quickly, but I struggled to write lyrics for months. Then one day, I just sat at the window with a typewriter and the phrase ‘constant craving’ came into my head. Once I had that, the lyrics flowed.”
The result is a sentimental ballad whose moving motive has captured the imagination of listeners across the continent, with its parent album Ingénue staying in the Billboard 200 chart for 90 weeks, making it Lang’s second-highest charting album after 2008’s Watershed. The single also did well in the charts, although her tendency for perfectionism meant that she didn’t believe it necessarily fit: “It was poppy, celebratory, upbeat and didn’t fit with the mood of the Ingénue album, [but] I guess part of me knew that it was going to be a big thing”.
‘Constant craving’ relates to human desire, longing, and the struggle to find meaning, much as Mitchell’s existentialist black crow narrator travels in search of love, purpose, and home. Both are considered spiritual songs, with Lang’s thought to be representative of samsara, the Buddhist cycle of birth and death.
“I wasn’t a practising Buddhist then, so I honestly don’t know what the impetus for the song was. I just wrote it from the perspective of desire and longing,” she told The Guardian.
“’Constant Craving’ was originally titled ‘Easter Passover’, because it was written on a day that coincides with both holidays,” noted Mink, comparing it to a gospel song, “For me it’s like a spiritual, like ‘We Shall Overcome’: an inspirational song about getting through the shitty parts.”
In fact, the song came out just after lang did, which was a move that required a lot of guts, for as she rightfully noted, there weren’t too many pop stars who were out of the closet at that time, which meant lang had a lot to lose even before she had reached some semblance of mainstream success, not to mention the peak of her potential. This resulted in the Edmonton-born singer performing at the 1993 Grammys, while religious groups protested outside the venue.
The track continued to inspire, and five years later, Mink got a call from The Rolling Stones’ management, wherein they had crafted a song ‘Anybody Seen My Baby’, “but Keith Richards’ daughter had told him, ‘Dad, that’s ‘Constant Craving!’” The group awarded Mink and lang songwriting credits, realising a “childhood dream that I still can’t believe actually happened”, Mink told The Guardian.
Although Lang was inspired by her, she relinquishes the comparison, telling The New York Times in 2018, “I’ll never be a Joni Mitchell. I’m too young to be a legend, and too old to be pertinent”.
