It’s of course a legend that falls apart under closer scrutiny, but has always had wings. Rolling Stone published a diagram depicting her famous lovers (reinforcing in her a lifelong distrust of publicity and fame), dubbing her, cruelly, “Queen of El-Lay” and even “Old Lady of The Year.” (This actually prompted her to black out talking to the publication for seven years.) In a manner that she herself was all too aware, Joni Mitchell was spun up to be at once a very serious, buttoned-up, intellectual, and earnest artist who didn’t play by the traditional rules of femininity, while also playing the role of seductress. Famously considering herself a painter first and foremost, she is far more than “just” a singer-songwriter with a singular voice (though hers, with its fluctuations and range, is doubtless one), far more than a criminally underrated guitarist, arranger, and wordsmith (though dude guitar gods like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page certainly learned a thing or two from her)-she seems, at least within the lens of collective memory, to arise as a kind of force, a totality.īut, of course, since we’re talking about an era in popular music and culture whose gates were kept and levers were operated by white men (as they still mostly are)-a machine whose gears were and are fueling and fueled by patriarchal assumptions and judgements-she got a lot of flack, not only for her sexual freedom, unconventional approach to relationships, and the way she wrote about men, but her free and unconventional approach to her own career. Vincent, and Lana Del Rey, a mother to artists as various as Prince (who’d pen fan letters as a teenager) and Kate Bush, a peer and muse to a guilded cohort of rock stars and folk legends like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, as well as Bob Dylan.

On the other side of the 20th century, she seems to have always been around-a beacon to whole generations of inventive musicians and performers: from Mitski, St. It’s all too easy to flatten a figure like Joni Mitchell, to take for granted her peerless body of work, her constant drive, the way her words can ache and cut, sway and celebrate.

Joni mitchell and leonard cohen