Today we have Joni Mitchell's fourth studio album Blue. Released in 1971, the album has since gone on to be widely praised as one of the greatest albums of all time, most recently ranked as the 3rd greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine only several days ago. The album features mostly acoustic guitar and piano work and shows Mitchell continuing to experiment with alternate guitar tuning as well as exploring many different lyrical topics, especially the loss of love, which was inspired by recent events in her personal life.
The cliché (perhaps not in 1971), idealistic painting of California as some utopian paradise drags me, but isn't "California" a terrific song anyway? Writing personal songs is nothing new for Mitchell, but she reaches new depths within herself on these gloomy pieces of music. Unlike Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, all of the songs are written in her voice, written about real events and she doesn't attempt to hide it. "All I Want" and "My Old Man" were written specifically about ex-lovers James Taylor and Graham Nash respectively and "Little Green" is about her daughter, whom she gave up for adoption before her music career took off (this was not public knowledge at the time of the album's release). The complex melodies and unique guitar playing add character, intrigue, and melancholy to the album, and while melancholy is the primary subject, there are fun and beautifully poetic lyrics too: "when I think of your kisses, my mind see-saws" on the opener, "part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time" on "A Case of You," and "the night is a starry dome" on "Carey," which are just three star lyrics in this vast sky. A [Later: A+]
