Joni Mitchell believes ‘Blue’ upset the “male singer-songwriters”
There are countless artists who will always be trying to do a fraction of what Joni Mitchell could in her songs.
She may not have been the most energetic presence when she got behind a microphone, but the music that she made throughout the 1970s is a road map on what a singer-songwriter was meant to be. This was what Bob Dylan would have sounded like if he had a few more musical lessons, but Mitchell made as many enemies as she did friends when she first began making music.
Then again, that’s kind of the nature of the beast in a lot of ways. As much as people like the idea of climbing their way up to the top in the music industry, there are bound to be a few people that you have to deal with along the way. Countless artists have horror stories of getting screwed over by their record company or a musician trying to stab them in the back for no good reason, but Mitchell’s problems were usually a bit more nuanced than simply having a few falling-outs.
Because, really, Mitchell is one of the few artists whose music spoke for itself a lot of the time. If it didn’t get on the charts, it wasn’t all that big a deal, and when listening to Mitchell talk about her approach, it was always about making something that was a bit more advanced than what she heard out of people like Dylan. But if she could make sophisticated music, why couldn’t she do the same thing with her lyrics?
After all, some of the greatest poets of her generation were starting to deconstruct what was supposed to be used in a rock and roll song, and it’s not like Mitchell didn’t have a lot of material to work with. Blue is still one of the most emotionally raw records that anyone has ever made, and for anyone who has recently gone through a breakup, what Mitchell is getting at here touches on the kind of material that most people feel but can never muster up the courage to actually say.
It was a brave stance for anyone to be taking at the time, but Mitchell felt that her masterpiece wasn’t given the time of day that it really should have, saying, “It was almost like Dylan going electric. I think it upset the male singer-songwriters. They’d go, ‘Oh no. Do we have to bare our souls like this now?’ [The next generation] seem to be able to face those emotions more easily than my generation.”
In their defense, though, it’s not like Mitchell was leaving much up to the imagination, either. Countless songwriters have at least tried to put a happy face on a sad situation now and again, but even in an era when John Lennon was stripping himself bare on Plastic Ono Band, Mitchell was willing to dismantle every single piece of her psyche to figure out why her heart aches so bad on a tune like ‘River’ or ‘All I Want’.
But if you look at where the rest of the music world has gone in that time, there are plenty of genres that wouldn’t have existed without Mitchell’s music. Her flirtations with jazz helped the folk scene delve into more open tunings and different note choices, and when it comes to being emotionally open, everyone from modern-day singer-songwriters to pop balladeers to even a few emo artists are pulling from Mitchell’s playbook whether they even realise it or not.
It wasn’t exactly the coolest thing for someone to do at the time, but Mitchell wasn’t concerned with earning herself points with the fashionable people. She wanted to follow her heart, and while she was leagues above Dylan in terms of musical knowledge, they both had a knack for giving the people the kinds of songs that they didn’t know they wanted. They might be a bit too raw at the moment, but as time goes by, these songs can be a liferaft for anyone going through a tough spot.
