The Run That Back series is a deep dive into some of music’s most popular or underrated projects. Whether it’s been 5 years or 50, there’s never a wrong time to ‘run that back.’
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Joni Mitchell’s Blue turned 50 years old on June 22, and subsequently, the album that has spanned five decades continues to wash over each generation it encounters with a tidal wave of indelible vulnerability.
While in years, the album that debuted in 1971 may feel historical, Joni’s lyrics, sentiments, and picture painting never seem to age. The record soaks up an entire moment in time and capture’s Mitchell’s state of being in the early 70s, it even solidifies an entire movement of sound, but yet the record feels unfinished because each time a new listener latches on to the body of work new meanings and connections unfold.
It is the album that continues to be discovered by future generations, and the sonic identity that effortlessly transcends the boundaries of time.
In a modern reflection of the album done by the Los Angeles Times, LA-based, rock band, HAIM, explained that the album’s title track drew them in at an impressionable age, and ultimately influenced their own “California” sound. Introduced to the album by their mother, the sisters of HAIM shared, “As we grew older and started diving deeper into the record,” they fell in love with “Blue.”
The band members add, “From the opening piano melody and the first utterance of the word “blue,” you’re instantly transported to the place and time of how she was feeling when she wrote the song. The rawness of her vocals and the confessional style of her lyrics have always resonated with us, but “Blue” in particular struck a deeper chord. It’s a song we always revisited when writing our album Women In Music Pt. III.”
A purveyor of the Laurel Canyon sound, Joni soared beyond contributing to a movement that bubbled out from the peaks and winding roads of the green hills that stretch from Hollywood to Studio City. Mitchell drove songwriting to a place that told stories of her own heartache, which allowed listeners to bathe in their own pain or understand that there was someone else out there who was feeling the same sweep of emotions.
In a 1979 interview with the famed Cameron Crowe of Rolling Stone, the Canadian-born singer noted, “The Blue album, there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either."
A song like “California” shares a longing for place, while the track “Little Green” shares a longing for what could have been, it’s where Joni sings matter-of-factly about giving up her child for adoption in the mid-60s. The lyrics on each track, filled with metaphors, or dichotomizing the feeling of warmth and cold, make the listening experience feel like we are seeing the world through Joni’s eyes and translating it back to our own state of being.
Mitchell’s words, “Like the nights when the northern lights perform/ There'll be icicles and birthday clothes/ And sometimes there'll be sorrow/ Child with a child pretending/ Weary of lies you are sending home/ So you sign all the papers in the family name/ You're sad and you're sorry, but you're not ashamed/ Little green, have a happy ending,” paint a swirling picture of rugged but appealing honesty and glide through a subject that is juxtaposed by despair and hope.
Not only is Blue a staple in music history and a climax in Joni’s singer-songwriter career, but it is a staple in feminism. It’s a collection of songs that touch upon topics that women were not typically candid about in the late 60s and early 70s.
The project opened a door to the life of one woman dwelling in the canyon, who knew how to create plucky and sweet sounds on an Appalachian dulcimer, but that door has stayed open to the generations of women listening since the record’s debut.
A surge of energy and a precise medley of light and dark is woven through Blue. These perfectly crafted contrasts invite listeners in and take them on a journey as Joni was on the pulse of solidifying a musical movement, while also unraveling her own feelings and complex pain. Finished yet unfinished, the album is filled with stanzas that end with ellipses, not periods… just waiting for its next set of ears to latch and perpetuate Blue’s ongoing evolution.
Today Mitchell’s Blue 50 (Demos & Outtakes) EP is here in celebration of the records 50 years of storytelling.
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