“Songs Are Like Tattoos”: On Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”

When I first settled in to put this review together, I looked up all the lyrics to every song on the internet. I looked up the year it was released, which record label distributed it, which awards it won, and who some of the musicians were playing on the tracks.

I then realized that I was showing my age. That’s not how people listened to “Blue” in 1971.

Nowadays, all of that information can be found with the touch of a button, obviously. In 1971 though, one was left with almost nothing but a turntable and the sleeve the vinyl record had come in. Lyrics and instrumentation? You just had to listen to the music, man.

That’s how Elvis Costello has described listening to Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”, huddled around a record player in some friend’s bedroom thinking to himself that this was one of the greatest albums ever created. I would agree.

The only other thing I really know about the album was that just prior to writing it, Joni had gone through a particularly rough breakup with fellow folk songwriter Graham Nash. You could call it one of the best and most beautiful breakup albums of all time. I’d also agree with that.

That’s all I really needed or wanted to know before stepping into the album that I’d heard dozens of times before with a fresh set of ears. Here were my thoughts as the album spun:

“Gonna wreck my stockings in some juke box dive, do you wanna dance with me?”

It goes without saying that Joni’s voice is seriously unique. Mesmerizing and haunting, she’s able to shift between vocal registers effortlessly. Try to mimic her voice and you’ll find it’s very difficult to do.

“I miss my clean white linen and my fancy French cologne.”

She rarely uses backup singers, but when she does they support her own vocal in a way that feels connected. She doesn’t need them all the time, she uses her lines wisely, asking you to either be patient or catch up with her words, asking you to be an active listener.

“Everybody’s saying that hell’s the hippest way to go…”

There’s a good deal of jazz and blues influence in her arrangements, that much is clear. But she keeps all her instrumentation simple, sitting at her piano or layering the acoustic guitars. (And let’s not forget that steel guitar in “California”.) It leaves wide open space for her vocal.

“Reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue…just wait until my skin turns brown, then I’m going on…will you take me as I am, strung out on another man?”

You must pay attention to the lyrics. They’re like stories, detailed ones that require your attention, as though she’s talking with you in the moment, and not almost 50 years later from a turntable. People who claim to not like Joni Mitchell are probably listening to her at a surface level, and she just refuses to work like that. None of the songs on “Blue” are terribly long, but they’re filling and rich.

“I remember that time you told me, you said, love is touching souls. Surely you touched mine, cuz’ part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time.”

“Case of You” was, and likely always will be, my favorite track on the album. It was one of the first Joni tracks I was ever introduced to. (The other was “Circle Game”.) There’s not really much else to say about it, it’s written that well.

“Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe.”

This album is brilliant for the same reasons “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty is brilliant, or Bruce Springsteen’s “The River”. It’s painfully simple and painfully detailed all at the same time. And it’s chock full with so much human emotion it’s almost hard to wrap your head around. It makes listening soothing, and also a challenge. Isn’t that the mark of a good record? If it doesn’t make you think about what you’re hearing, if it doesn’t reflect on you in some way, what is the point? Maybe that’s why Joni has stepped away from the music world more and more in recent years. (Of course, coupled with her health.) There aren’t as many people making those albums anymore. At least we still have “Blue”.