“She Just Had Me on the Grill There”: Why Joni Mitchell Was Cornered in a Bar Over This Tragic Song

Joni Mitchell has always leaned into raw emotions, writing one tragic or, at the very least, melancholy song over her decades-long career. Her music’s raw, unapologetic approach to emotion once made iconic singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson visibly uncomfortable. Bob Dylan once said she wrote music in her own world.

But aside from the commentary and criticisms of her musical peers, Mitchell has also dealt with pushback from the general public—including the time a woman cornered Mitchell in a bar over the “Blue” singer’s tragic (and true) song about a harrowing 1993 news story from Ireland.

A Songwriting Assignment Not Quite Accomplished

Even since her big breakout hits like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Both Sides Now,” Joni Mitchell’s music has always had an air of melancholy about it. This stark, realistic approach to writing only deepened over the years. By the early 1990s, her reputation for sad music preceded her, causing her property caretaker to challenge her to write a happy song.

“He said, ‘You’re a cheerful person, Joni. But you write all these melancholy songs. I think it’s because you write them at night. Why don’t you try writing a song in the daylight?’” Mitchell recalled in a 1994 CBC interview. “So, I sat out on a rock, and I tuned my guitar to the sounds of the birds around, which were mostly squawky birds, you know. But there is a tonality to it. And I waited for an idea for the lyric to come.”

“A couple of days went by. I went to the market, and in the checkout lane, I purchased a newspaper and dragged it home. On the front page, there was a story about the Magdalene Laundries…outside of Dublin. The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity had sold 11.5 acres to a realtor for development. In plowing the ground in preparation, they unearthed, I think, it was over a hundred bodies of women. Not exactly in unmarked graves, but marked ‘Magdalene of the tears,’ ‘Magdalene of the sorrows.’

Between 1800 and 1970, “indecent” women—prostitutes, unmarried mothers, and unmarried women who were publicly deemed to attract unwanted attention from men due to their good looks—lived in “Dickensian” conditions at the church until they died and the church placed them in relatively anonymous graves.

Why Joni Mitchell’s Tragic Song Got Her Cornered In A Bar

Joni Mitchell’s 1994 track “The Magdalene Laundries” certainly wouldn’t meet the criteria for a “happy song” to most listeners. But the song was quintessentially Joni: poignant, beautifully descriptive, and equally biting. However, with the Troubles still underway and other Irish artists, like Sinead O’Connor, rocking the boat with her outspoken criticism of the Catholic church, Mitchell’s song was not necessarily a welcome addition to Ireland’s narrative.

During a backstage interview at Madison Square Garden with Joe Jackson, Mitchell recalled an Irish woman cornering her in a bar over her song. The woman asked Mitchell if she was Irish, and the songwriter replied she was, if only marginally. Then, the woman asked Mitchell if she was Catholic. Mitchell said no.

“Well, then what business is it of yours to be writing about our business?” The woman asked Mitchell. “It was bad enough with Sinead ripping up the picture of the Pope, but at least she’s one of ours.” Eventually, the woman ceded that she enjoyed the song. The woman had recently married an Irish Protestant from Saskatoon, and she told Mitchell she planned on using the song to “break the ice” with her mother, who didn’t approve of their marriage.

“But oh, man—she just had me on the grill there for a while about it,” Mitchell recalled. “But it’s a raw subject.”

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns