Roberta Joan “Joni” Mitchell CC (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Drawing from folk, pop, rock, classical, and jazz, Mitchell’s songs often reflect on social and philosophical ideals as well as her feelings about romance, womanhood, disillusionment, and joy. She has received many accolades, including nine Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Rolling Stone called her “one of the greatest songwriters ever”, and AllMusic has stated, “When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century”.
Roberta Joan “Joni” Mitchell CC (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Drawing from folk, pop, rock, classical, and jazz, Mitchell’s songs often reflect on social and philosophical ideals as well as her feelings roughly romance, womanhood, disillusionment, and joy. She has usual many accolades, including nine Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Rolling Stone called her “one of the greatest songwriters ever”, and AllMusic has stated, “When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century”.
Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and throughout western Canada, before moving on to the night clubs of Toronto, Ontario. In 1965, she moved to the United States and began touring. Some of her native songs (“Urge for Going”, “Chelsea Morning”, “Both Sides, Now”, “The Circle Game”) were covered by further folk singers, allowing her to sign in imitation of Reprise Records and sticker album her debut album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell helped define an become old and a generation past popular songs like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock”. Her 1971 album Blue is often cited as one of the best albums of whatever time; it was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone‘s 2003 list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, rising to number 3 in the 2020 edition. In 2000, The New York Times chose Blue as one of the 25 albums that represented “turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music”. In 2017, NPR ranked Blue number 1 on a list of Greatest Albums Made By Women. Mitchell’s fifth album, For the Roses, was released in 1972. She later switched labels and began exploring more jazz-influenced melodic ideas, by artifice of lush pop textures, on 1974’s Court and Spark, which featured the radio hits “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris” and became her best-selling album.
Around 1975, Mitchell’s vocal range began to shift from mezzo-soprano to more of a wide-ranging contralto. Her distinctive piano and open-tuned guitar compositions after that grew more harmonically and rhythmically technical as she melded jazz with stone and roll, R&B, classical music and non-western beats. In the late 1970s, she began on the go with noted jazz musicians including Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny as well as Charles Mingus, who asked her to collaborate upon his given recordings. She innovative turned to pop and electronic music, and engaged in diplomatic protest. In 2002, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 44th Annual Grammy Awards.
Mitchell is the sole producer credited on most of her albums, including all her acquit yourself in the 1970s. A critic of the music industry, she quit touring and released her 17th, and reportedly last, album of indigenous songs in 2007. Mitchell has expected most of her own album covers, describing herself as a “painter derailed by circumstance”.