3 Forever Joni Mitchell Songs that Bridge Poetry and Music

The 80-year-old Canadian-born songwriter and performer Joni Mitchell has been opening up psyches and demonstrating the combination of poetics and music for decades. Thanks to contemporary artists today like Brandi Carlile, new audiences have been introduced to Mitchell. But for more than 50 years, she has been penning songs that are as worthy of Ph.D. placement as much as radio play.

Here below, we wanted to explore three such tracks. A trio of tunes from Mitchell that demonstrate her intellect, intricate writing, and eternal prowess. Indeed, these are three forever Joni Mitchell songs that bridge poetry and music.

[RELATED: Joni Mitchell’s Perfect Response to Heckling Fans Telling Her To Smile]

“Big Yellow Taxi” from Ladies of the Canyon (1970)

This song, which was famously sampled by Counting Crows in 2002, is about the downside of progress. Often, we think that more apartment buildings, more store options, more amenities are a good thing. But at what cost? What is being lost under all that concrete? That is the message of this protest song, which Mitchell delivers here below on an acoustic guitar. On the track, she sings,

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

“River” from Blue (1971)

The opening of this piano-driven track almost sounds like “Jingle Bells,” so perhaps that’s why it’s become a popular number around the holidays. That aside, the classic folk number from Mitchell is about a breakup and she sings about wishing to get away from her pain, pushing down a frozen river. On the emotive, swelling song, Mitchell sings,

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh, I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green
I’m going to make a lot of money
Then I’m going to quit this crazy scene

“Both Sides Now” from Clouds (1969)

One of the songs from Mitchell that has been covered by myriad artists, from Judy Collins to Dave Van Ronk, this track dips and dives, flies and soars via her dexterous voice. The song points at the limits of life itself. How we can’t be in two places at once; how we can’t lose and gain the same thing at the same time, and how realizing that fact can create a poignant type of sadness in our soul. On the offering, Mitchell sings,

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
Looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

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