Joni Mitchell s/d

I'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:

( The romantic search for female self by way of love relationships good and bad )