Joni Mitchell’s decades-long career has brought with it not only a tremendous and varied musical catalog but also a wellspring of wisdom and hindsight about the music industry, artistic journeys, and the world at large. Though she keeps the public eye at a far greater distance than she might have in her early “Big Yellow Taxi” days, that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been paying attention.
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In a lengthy and revealing interview with Rolling Stone in 1991, Mitchell held no punches as she talked about her experience in the industry, musical idols, and even public figures she can’t stand, like Madonna. Re-reading that conversation in the 2020s, her commentary highlights just how much the problems she talked about in 1991 have worsened over time.
But as they say, the first step in fixing a problem is to figure out what it is. So, maybe Mitchell’s hot takes from the early 1990s hold more water in 2024 than one might think at first glance.
Joni Mitchell’s Comments About The Music Industry
Long before Joni Mitchell’s health problems forced her into a creative hiatus in 2015, the Canadian singer-songwriter was already struggling with the disillusionment she felt toward the music industry as a whole. She “retired” from music in the early 2000s, condemning the business and emphasizing her desire to follow her own artistic path. In her 1991 interview with Rolling Stone, she laid out the groundwork for this reasoning.
Mitchell lamented the role press plays in an album’s commercial viability, specifically within the context of her two records, Wild Things Run Fast and Dog Eat Dog. “The press influenced more than we would hope it would,” she admitted. “There are people who are afraid to stick their necks out and like something without being told it’s hip. And that’s gotten increasingly worse over the last two generations. There has been a general decline of independent thinking and integrity.”
“When I started out, rock & roll was in small theaters,” she continued. “There was no arena rock. The possibility of mass exploitation had not occurred to anybody. It was a small, intimate forum with loyalties. The bigger the bucks, the bigger the greed, the bigger the crap around it. People knew what a song was back then, which they don’t know anymore.”
What We Can Learn From Her Experience
To be fair, Joni Mitchell’s 1991 commentary comes with its fair share of “doom and gloom.” After all, isn’t that how it always feels—the before times were better than now? Nostalgia tends to bring an air of romanticism that makes the past seem shinier and more appealing than it did when it was the present. However, Mitchell’s take on the commodification of music lends an interesting if not cynical perspective for artists now.
With the rise of streaming platforms, viral marketing, and the sheer number of artists trying to “make it,” sellability has become more important than ever. This type of culture didn’t exist—at least not at this level of ubiquity—when Mitchell was cutting her teeth along the West Coast and Canada. If she thought that it was difficult to have people explore music naturally in 1991, it probably seems downright impossible now.
But it doesn’t have to be, and that, dear reader, is the long-winded conclusion. If we allow ourselves to absorb the insights of those who came before us, we can build on their success and avoid their pitfalls. At a time when everyone’s trying to sell you something, why not go on the offense and do some browsing instead of waiting for a pitch? Return to the “intimate forums” of yesteryear through your local scene. Rifle through new releases. Practice giving art more than 30 seconds of your attention.
The individual listener can’t overhaul the entire music industry, but you can rebuild your relationship with music. For the sake of all the great music waiting for you to hear it for the first time before an app or record executive tells you it’s good, what’s the harm in trying?
Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage
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