230. Joni MItchell - Blue (1971)
















Track Listing

1. All I Want
2. My Old Man
3. Little Green
4. Carey
5. Blue
6. California
7. This Flight Tonight
8. River
9. Case Of You
10. Last Time I Saw Richard

Review

This has been one of my favourite singer/songwriter albums for a long long time. Actually I've never got into any other Joni Mitchell album other than this one, I will however get to hear some more of her in the future, and that's a good thing. This is a really beautiful album. The writing is superb, she has an amazing voice and the music is just plain perfect.

It is an interesting album in the way that it makes you listen to the lyrics, they demand your attention in a really good way, because the lyrics are great. Joni's voice modulates in a way that grabs your attention throughout, and the lyrics are really beautiful poetry. There are lines in these tracks which are as good if not better than any Dylan or Cohen, but are seen from a very different perspective; Joni sees relationships from the other side as a female and relates events that male singer/songwriters don't, like in Little Green where she talks about the daughter she gave up for adoption.

Very good singer/songwriters are rare, and I am sorry to say that female singer/songwriters of note are even rarer, maybe because of societies pressures that a woman in the music business has to have a pretty face. Joni is however a perfect example of an amazing female singer/songwriter. If they ask me to name five it would have to be Joni Mitchell, P J Harvey, Tori Amos, Bjork and Ani Di Franco, oh and Suzanne Vega. Six... six then! Tracy Chapman is quite good... crap, there's loads of good fermale singer/songwriters after all... me and my sexism. Just keep in mind Joni is really, really good! So buy it from UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Case Of You
2. River
3. California
4. The Last Time I Saw Richard

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:


In 2003, the album was ranked number 30 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In Chart's three reader polls to determine the 50 greatest Canadian albums of all time, Blue won the top spot in 2000 and third place in 1996 and 2005. It was also ranked #14 on a list compiled by VH1 of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time, the highest album by a female artist to appear on the list. In addition, it was also voted also 13 on Hotpress Magazine's "Top 100 Albums ever" by various other artists, and was voted 66th in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Albums. It was listed among the "All-Time 100 albums by Time magazine in november 2006.

Case Of You: