"I never wanted to be a star," Joni Mitchell said in an interview with Joe Smith in 1986. "I didn't like entering a room with all eyes on me." She's said things like that all her life. As a teenager, learning everything there was to learn about her, I used to think that maybe Joni Mitchell wasn't beloved in the way her contemporaries like Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan were because she just didn't want to be. Had Joni Mitchell spoken so often about her distaste for adoration and accolades that the world stopped giving them to her? Four albums in?Now, older and with even more love for her than I had then, I know that isn't true. Least of all because both Dylan and Cohen were also documented denouncers of celebrity, and most of all because I understand people better. Sexism and misogyny towards women—in and out of the spotlight—is just… never not present.As it turns out, it was likely Joni's female-ness that kept her from skyrocketing into stardom. Which is not to say she doesn't have legions of appreciators—she does. Just way less than she ought to. As a songwriter, Joni was unapologetically human, much like Billie Holiday had been. Vulnerable and still venerable; full of both joy and sorrow; emotionally intelligent and still, at odds with the world at large, and all the people in it. As a singer, Joni was sentimental, soaring off into undeniably feminine falsetto on a whim and writing labyrinthine lyrics that often seemed dewey-eyed. But there were always deep-laid criticisms of that very thing sprinkled through. On "Woman of Heart and Mind," Joni was characteristically self aware: I am a woman of heart and mind / With time on her hands / No child to raise / You come to me like a little boy / And I give you my scorn and my praise.Continue reading on Noisey
Advertisement