The musician Carole King calls her “sister in songwriting”
Tom Petty once said songwriting was like fishing, an act you often do alone while waiting relentlessly for something to catch on. For Carole King, things were much the same; only her world was shaped by the sounds of those around her, who guided her and helped her to reveal her own uniqueness. “All artists are informed by other art,” she once said. “And you take it in.”
That said, there’s much to be said about how much King set alight her own path. While discussing her legacy, it’s easy to crossover into the stories of Gerry Goffin or James Taylor. And while such figures helped to shape her music in countless ways, this can sometimes overshadow just how much King did on her own, and how much she, too, inspired the music of others, particularly Taylor, who once said Tapestry wasn’t so much a one-sided affair as a means to improve each other and lift each other up.
In many ways, therefore, their collaboration was also a match made in heaven, and one King once admitted she owes a lot to, especially as an artist who just wanted to get up and sing but didn’t know how. At least, not at first. In her eyes, it was Taylor who encouraged her to take the plunge and realise her own potential, instead of hiding in the shadows of others and holding back when she knew she had it in her all along.
“I have James Taylor to thank for nudging me out in front,” she once explained, saying that he turned to her one day and said, “All you have to go is go out there, be yourself, sing your songs, and everything will be fine.” However, it wasn’t just Taylor that King thanked for being able to do what she does. She also fell in love with Joni Mitchell’s words the first time she heard them, and let her songwriting and general attitude factor into a lot of her own work, especially when it came to turning experiences into poetry.
Joni Mitchell’s lasting impact
King shared the same opinion as Stevie Nicks, who once said that it was people like Mitchell who taught other songwriters that you can say “thousands of words” in a song, but only “if you sing it right.” For King, though, it went beyond the beauty of the words themselves and into the oscillations between simplicity and complexity, a real testament to the way Mitchell didn’t just feel her own joy and sorrow, but could transform such emotions into art that others genuinely cared about as if the stories were their own.
“When the album was released in 1971, I was blown away by Joni’s open guitar tunings, unpredictable chord changes, and amazing vocal chops that allowed her to move effortlessly from warm, rich low notes to bell-like high notes and back again,” King explained to The Guardian in 2021. Adding: “I loved the simplicity of her rhythmic accompaniment on piano, guitar, or dulcimer.”
She also highlighted her love for ‘Little Green’ and ‘Blue’, as a mother, signing off with the ultimate review: “The album is such a perfectly sequenced collection of inspired and well-crafted songs that it’s difficult to choose one as a favourite. I’ll just say to my sister in songwriting: ‘Congratulations, Joni, and thank you.’”
Thus, it wasn’t just about how Mitchell stood tall against the uncertainty of an entire era with the kind of confidence others could only dream of; it was the way she did it with such vulnerability, often drawing attention to the kinds of choices and mannerisms that contested her entire character. To artists like King, that was the ultimate definition of an innovator: to be able to lay your soul bare in beautiful ways, even if it hurt. Even if it revealed your deepest, darkest secrets.
