The Joni Mitchell song that secretly mocked the DJs that loved it
Joni Mitchell is, without a doubt, one of the greatest musicians of all time. Her innate lyricism and exceptional ability with a guitar have cemented her as someone who can move you through sound, creating a sonic connection that can reach out and touch you no matter where in the world you are.
She is incredibly clever in her approach to songwriting. Her guitar-playing ability is a particular standout. While she doesn’t go in guns blazing like other guitarists, she conveys more emotion in her approach to the guitar than a lot of other artists do. She has been recognised on a large scale for her guitar ability, and her genius as a musician is widely credited.
David Crosby once said that her guitar playing is “Like a band in the way you approach a chord and string the melody along,” he said, “She was so new and fresh with how she approached it. It’s these odd tunings that have tripped up thousands of artists trying to figure out how to get ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ to sound like her ‘Big Yellow Taxi’.”
Mitchell said that when she played, she didn’t see the guitar as a guitar but rather as an orchestra. “The top three strings being horn section, the bottom three being cello, viola, and bass – the bass being indicated but not rooted,” she said.
Of course, her musical intelligence didn’t start and stop at her ability to just write music; she also had a thorough understanding of the industry and how things worked. She wasn’t afraid to use that knowledge to her advantage to ensure that her songs became popular, and the best example of her doing this is on the 1972 track ‘You Turn Me On I’m a Radio’.
When you consider Joni Mitchell’s career, despite plenty of excellent songs in her discography, very few were charting hits. She didn’t make the kind of music frequently played on the radio; therefore, her tracks didn’t always get the airtime they deserved. Mitchell rarely compromised on her art, but in order to ensure her ’72 hit got airtime, she changed the song structure so that it allowed DJs to hear themselves talk, stroking their ego while simultaneously getting her song played.
“I decided there were some ways to make a hit, increase the chances,” she said, “DJs have to like it, so you put a long part at the beginning and the end so the DJs can talk over it. Take a tender situation and translate it into commonly appealing songs for the DJs. It had to be a bit corny, so I wrote this little song called ‘Oh Honey, You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio’.”
The song has a slightly elongated intro and outro, both of which are around 20 seconds long. This gives DJs enough time to discuss a song and how they feel about it. In a bid to get a song on the radio, Mitchell indirectly mocks DJs, knowing that they wouldn’t play a song unless they could talk over it. This shows her genius stretching beyond just making music but making it in a way that it could play the system.
