The two songs Joni Mitchell felt had become legendary: “I think of it as ingénue”
Joni Mitchell is something of a legend and an unparalleled voice in folk music who will likely never be matched by another artist of the same calibre.
She started out in the same vein as her contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young, but there was always an additional ornateness to the work that she put out, with her arrangements and approaches to songcraft being a lot more elaborate and detailed. This has always been the major selling point of Mitchell’s output throughout her career, but it hasn’t always been the modus operandi of her work to fit in all of these elaborate detours into different styles.
Her earlier records – think Ladies of the Canyon and Blue – nudged her just outside the usual folk boundaries. But it’s on later albums like Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and Hejira where she properly veered into jazzier ground. Back then, some raised eyebrows, thinking the move might tank her career. Still, Mitchell stuck to her guns, trusting that following her own muse would pay off eventually – and sure enough, it did. Those bolder, more experimental albums have since been praised by fans and critics alike.
There haven’t been many other artists who have managed to make this leap between genres successfully, and this goes to show how adept Mitchell has always been as a songwriter. Whether sticking to tradition or venturing out into unknown territory with something that could have potentially jeopardised her career prospects by being more outré, what Mitchell was always capable of was creating outstanding records that don’t feel restricted to a single time period, and still hold up as wildly original to this day.
Lots of people have covered her work, both during the peak of her career and in the years she’s been inactive as a recording artist, and in addition to this, she’s had hit singles and albums throughout her career. But, for all of the successes she has had, does that make her a legend in her own eyes, and how does she perceive the popularity of her work?
In a resurfaced interview with Barney Hoskins from 1994, she proclaimed that two of her songs in particular had reached legendary status, and told the story of how one of them even came to be so revered.
“I sang ‘The Circle Game’ as an encore in Edmonton, and I kind of avoid it because I think of it as ingénue,” she admitted, almost wilfully tarnishing its reputation.
Adding, “A lot of children learned ‘The Circle Game’ in school. I got a letter from a boy who was 21, and he said, you know, ‘I sang that song, ‘The Circle Game’, in summer camp year after year after year. I had to.’ He said, ‘I never understood it. I just turned 21.’ You know, it was a nice letter to receive, so that and ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ has become culture.”
These are, of course, not the only two songs of hers to have reached legendary status, but there’s no doubting that they’re very important to the history and legacy of Mitchell’s oeuvre. She may see ‘The Circle Game’ as being beneath her usual standard, and far from the more complex stuff she would create on later releases, but that and ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ are massively popular songs for a reason, the reason being that they’re universal in their message, and spellbinding in their delivery.
