Joni Mitchell’s songwriting is a masterclass in capturing the complex nuances of human relationships, from soaring love songs to gut-punching break-up ballads. With her biting lyrical wit and stunning harmonic arrangements, Mitchell has based her entire career on writing about the feelings we often push aside or ignore because, well, facing them head-on is too much.
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The native Canadian singer-songwriter has written on a wide myriad of topics, from odes to friends (“Free Man in Paris”) to environmentally conscious pleas (“Big Yellow Taxi”). Mitchell approaches each subject unapologetically and honestly. Her love and break-up songs are certainly no exception.
Here are five of her best.
“That Song About the Midway”
Some people break up over the phone. Others might meet somewhere to split face-to-face. But back in the late 1960s, Joni Mitchell opted to deliver her break-up message to fellow singer-songwriter David Crosby via song…in front of all of their friends. Mitchell and Crosby dated briefly in the early days of the former musician’s career, but Crosby’s infidelity and their clashing egos proved too much for the couple, and they split after a year.
Before they did, Mitchell attended a house party at the Monkees’ Peter Tork’s home, guitar in hand. “She came in, and she was kind of different,” Crosby told Howard Stern in the summer of 2021. “She’s like, ‘I’ve got a new song,’ and we were all there, and we all said, ‘Oh, fantastic, a new Joni song!’ And she starts to sing it, and it’s plainly a goodbye to me. Then, she sang it again in case I didn’t get it the first time. Unbelievable! Everybody in the room was going, ‘Oh.’ Everybody. It’s hysterically funny.”
“My Old Man”
Shortly after Joni Mitchell broke up with David Crosby through her scathing song, “That Song About the Midway,” the Canadian singer-songwriter struck up a relationship with Crosby’s bandmate, Graham Nash. Their connection seemed even more passionate, although Mitchell left in an equally abrupt way, breaking up with Nash via telegram in 1970. However, each musician wrote heartwarming tributes to their love before they split, including Nash’s “Our House” and Mitchell’s piano ballad “My Old Man.”
Mitchell’s ode to domesticity is one of her most overwhelmingly positive songs. With the exception of the moments that her lover isn’t there (and when he’s gone, me and them lonesome blues collide), Mitchell’s “My Old Man” is a touching love song through and through. My old man, he’s a singer in the park, she begins, making it easy to draw a connection between her anonymous “old man” and her artistic contemporary, Graham Nash. He’s a walker in the rain, he’s a dancer in the dark.
“A Case Of You”
While some might consider Joni Mitchell’s iconic “A Case of You” from her 1971 album Blue to be a love song, doing so would require looking past the more cutting lines in the dulcimer track. Sure, she insists a fairly romantic, I could drink a case of you, darling, and I would still be on my feet. But the notion isn’t as sappy as it seems at first glance. Many have speculated that “A Case of You” was also about Graham Nash, but others suggest the song could be about Mitchell’s other lovers, Leonard Cohen or James Taylor.
In either case, Mitchell certainly doesn’t hold back her feelings of hindsight and disdain for her past relationship. Just before our love got lost you said, ‘I am as constant as a northern star,’ she begins. And I said, ‘Constantly in the darkness? Where is that at? If you want me, I’ll be in the bar. No one could woo Mitchell out of her sensibilities, not even if she drank a whole case of whatever love potion they were trying to administer to her.
“Coyote”
Nothing makes a song more emotionally devastating than expertly blending a love song and a break-up song into one, which is precisely what Joni Mitchell did with her 1976 track “Coyote.” The freeform, beautifully written track off Hejira detailed the fleeting affair Mitchell had with playwright Sam Shepard, who had come along for Bob Dylan’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” concert tour. From their long hours on the road to the tour’s drug of choice, c******, Mitchell describes being a prisoner of the fine white lines on the freeway.
The prolific singer-songwriter presents her neutral perspective of their relationship from the very first line: No regrets, coyote, we just come from such different sets of circumstance. The song also includes some of Mitchell’s most sexually suggestive lyrics, from He pins me in a corner, and he won’t take ‘no’ to he picks up my scent on his fingers while he’s watching the waitress’ legs. Indeed, “Coyote” is as brazen as it is bittersweet.
Photo by Ron Pownall/Getty Images
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