{"id":40063,"date":"2006-12-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/blue-2\/"},"modified":"2006-12-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-04T00:00:00","slug":"blue-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/blue-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Rolling Stone came out with its second or third incarnation of the \u201cBest Albums of All Time,<\/a>\u201d much fuss was raised when the highest position for a female solo artist was 30. That honor was given to Joni Mitchell\u2019s Blue, <\/i>but it was a great pick inasmuch as the album is one of the starting points of the modern female singer\/songwriter movement.<\/p>\n

When it comes to discovering female singer\/songwriters, I have worked in reverse. I started with Tori Amos and eventually amassed a healthy collection of PJ Harvey, Lucinda Williams, Liz Phair and Aimee Mann. But it wasn\u2019t until 2002 when I was given Blue<\/i> as a graduation gift that I had any Joni Mitchell in my collection. <\/p>\n

I would like to say listening to Blue<\/i> transfixed me and took me to another world the first time, but that didn’t quite happen — not because of the lack of quality but because you feel you\u2019ve heard this every day. It’s like listening to Led Zeppelin for the first time after listening to heavy metal for a decade or so. But then you realize that Zep and Joni wrote the book on their respective genres; in particular, Mitchell’s influence is heard in the folksy background music of independent bookstores to lame, live Earth Day concerts on college campuses to the countless pale imitators of her style. It\u2019s hard to listen to the original for the first time with fresh ears. Unless you read the lyrics. <\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s saying that hell\u2019s the hippest way to go \/ Well, I don\u2019t think so \/ But I\u2019m gonna take a look around it though \/ Blue, I love you,\u201d Joni Mitchell sings on the title track. The lyric came as the \u201870s was in its infancy, nursing the wounds of Martin Luther King\u2019s assassination, the death of the hippie movement and the ascent of Nixon during the height of the Vietnam War. <\/p>\n

Most of the tracks on Blue<\/i> are just Joni Mitchell and the piano. The cover perfectly reflects the mood of the album: it\u2019s like you\u2019re peering into someone\u2019s home and seeing someone on the verge of tears. Mitchell\u2019s warbly vocals may be off-putting to those who are more accustomed to Bjork or Tori Amos-style vocals, but the vulnerability of these ten songs packs an emotional wallop. <\/p>\n

It could be because of the intensity, but Blue<\/i> has been relatively untouched by commercial radio and consequently many listeners won’t recognize any of these songs save for \u201cThis Flight Tonight,\u201d which Nazareth covered in a hit version later in the decade. But much like the same way Mitchell approached Blue<\/i>, the best way to listen to the album is full immersion, forgetting all of the great and not-so-great imitators that Mitchell\u2019s work has spawned. <\/p>\n

Not only a landmark for the singer\/songwriter genre, Blue<\/i> is a landmark album whose impact can be heard in everything from the Dixie Chicks to Outkast. Well worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7249],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-40063","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-joni-mitchell","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40063"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40063"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}