Joni Mitchell s/d
Sep. 19th, 2009 02:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotI'm probably the only person in this joint who bought the first Joni Mitchell album when it came out (bought it for my brother, but it was so I could listen too). As I recall, it had warm moments but was relatively decorous, with lyrics that one could describe as "well-formed." I didn't stick with her. Did hear the hits, of course, "Woodstock" and "Big Yellow Taxi"; think I appreciated her going weird with her voice on "Taxi," but the hippy-dippy sentimentality of those songs made me sneer. I've heard bits and pieces of her other stuff - the only Joni I have in the house right now is Nazareth's cover of "This Flight Tonight" - and have the impression that they're more idiosyncratically her than the first album was, whatever version of herself she's displaying at the time, no longer tied to decorum or someone else's idea of the well-formed. But she still seems quiet, you know?
So, what of Joni's has made you care, what's made you think? What's she about? What's the good and the bad?
I'm asking because, despite not knowing her music all that well, I'm certain she's GIANT in her impact on whole hunks of what I've been loving this decade, the whole teen confessional thing; she's there in the music whether or not the performer has ever had Joni in her heart or hearing. Anyway, that's what I claimed when I joined this excellent discussion of Taylor Swift and princess pop:
As for what [Taylor's] music is funneling together, princess pop is only a piece. Part of what Taylor does comes from a line stretching back to Dylan (or, OK, to Byron and such) and feminized by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, which is the romantic search for female self by way of love relationships good and bad. So Taylor gets as fans the six-year-old princesses with pictures of unicorns on their walls but also their older sisters who might be science nerds or working on the lit magazine (the lit girls who don't go for La Roux types, that is, but my guess is that Elly La Roux has a lot in common with Taylor without knowing it), and a whole hunk of adults as well. The country stream that feeds into her ocean also has a history of busted romance songs and also has her including songs about siblings and intergenerational continuity and cross-generational commonality. My jaw hasn't completely lifted itself up from where it dropped in 2006 when I learned that the performer/co-writer of "Tim McGraw," a bittersweet reminiscence of teen love, a country staple at least since "Strawberry Wine" (performed in 1996 by 30-year-old Deana Carter on an album called Did I Shave My Legs For This?), was a 16-year-old girl named Taylor Swift.
(For further reading, try Sea partakes of ocean.)
So, what of Joni's has made you care, what's made you think? What's she about? What's the good and the bad?
I'm asking because, despite not knowing her music all that well, I'm certain she's GIANT in her impact on whole hunks of what I've been loving this decade, the whole teen confessional thing; she's there in the music whether or not the performer has ever had Joni in her heart or hearing. Anyway, that's what I claimed when I joined this excellent discussion of Taylor Swift and princess pop:
As for what [Taylor's] music is funneling together, princess pop is only a piece. Part of what Taylor does comes from a line stretching back to Dylan (or, OK, to Byron and such) and feminized by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, which is the romantic search for female self by way of love relationships good and bad. So Taylor gets as fans the six-year-old princesses with pictures of unicorns on their walls but also their older sisters who might be science nerds or working on the lit magazine (the lit girls who don't go for La Roux types, that is, but my guess is that Elly La Roux has a lot in common with Taylor without knowing it), and a whole hunk of adults as well. The country stream that feeds into her ocean also has a history of busted romance songs and also has her including songs about siblings and intergenerational continuity and cross-generational commonality. My jaw hasn't completely lifted itself up from where it dropped in 2006 when I learned that the performer/co-writer of "Tim McGraw," a bittersweet reminiscence of teen love, a country staple at least since "Strawberry Wine" (performed in 1996 by 30-year-old Deana Carter on an album called Did I Shave My Legs For This?), was a 16-year-old girl named Taylor Swift.
(For further reading, try Sea partakes of ocean.)
