Blue by Joni Mitchell

Because all you Spotify users were finally given the keys to the kingdom.

I’m guessing most folks who read this blog are abundantly aware of the fact that Joni Mitchell and Neil Young’s music is back on Spotify after a Joe-Rogan-motivated period of non-existence on the platform. My only tangible reason for remaining an Apple Music user has been nullified. Well, Apple Music still pays artists better, so there!

Anyway, as you the dominant Spotify class gain access to the wild world of Joni Mitchell, I thought I’d return to the format of one of my favorite blog posts, a sort of listening guide to A Very Lonely Solstice by Fleet Foxes. The following is an energetic guide of sorts to what my roommate Maddie’s dad calls “the greatest singer/songwriter album of all time.”

I listen to Blue always, on a continuous loop. I have occasional weeks off, but there is never a time during which Blue feels inappropriate to me. It grasps something fundamental about youth, some sense of its ephemeralness even at its peak. I got into Blue initially through “River” as I think many of us do. Blue in its entirety will always feel like my aunt Andy, the biggest Joni Mitchell fan I know to date.

Exposition over, let’s get into a song-by-song breakdown.

“All I Want”

“All I Want” is a hopeful spring day, a new romance, a little jaded. It’s a hope that is aware of the very real possibility of hope being betrayed and that chooses to hope anyway. It is a girl wearing big sunglasses and biking on an old bike with a big basket and a small dog on a sunny day. She sheds a tear and laughs at her own melancholy. “All I Want” is the search for feeling, the desire to capture that sparkle of life that is so easy to see in other people and so hard to see in ourselves. It is Zora Neale Hurston’s iconic line from Their Eyes Were Watching God… “She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to allude her.” “All I Want” is that desire to struggle with life, to tempt fate, to exist presently in the universe to find a love that is good.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“Oh, I hate you some / I hate you some, I love you some / Oh, I love you when I forget about me.”

“I wanna belong to the living.”

“My Old Man”

This is the long distance song. Maybe it’s just because I am in a long-distance relationship, but SERIOUSLY you guys. In the gentlest, simplest words Joni captures the ache of saying goodbye to your person and learning how to exist without them again for a while. I tend to listen to it on my way to the train after my boyfriend leaves my apartment or on the plane flying back to Chicago.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“My old man, he’s a singer in the park / He’s a walker in the rain, he’s a dancer in the dark.”

“But when he’s gone / Me and them lonesome blues collide / The bed’s too big / The frying pan’s too wide.”

“Little Green”

Springtime tears, green breaks, stubborn crocuses poking through snow, old stickers, and Sharpie on a colorful cast, wind-chapped cheeks, bark under fingernails, biting your lip so hard it bleeds, wooden sword fights, paper cuts, and a bandaid from your grandmother. Honey on toast and in tea and in coffee. The mist mode on a fancy hose head. Reading children’s books to no one, out loud. Peripheral fairies.

This song, for me, is the special brand of admiration you feel for your grandmother as a very little girl and seeing pain in your mother for the first time. Smile lines, eye bags, and Advil. This song is a Crying in the Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum song.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“Born with the moon in Cancer / Choose her a name she will answer to / Call her green and the winters cannot fade her / Call her green for the children who’ve made her little green / Be a gypsy dancer / He went to California / Hearing that everything’s warmer there / So you write him a letter and say, “Her eyes are blue” / He sends you a poem and she’s lost to you / Little green, he’s a non-conformer.”

“There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes / And sometimes there’ll be sorrow.”

“You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed, little green / Have a happy ending.”

“Carey”

If you haven’t seen Poor Things (2023), this might be a bit of a stretch for you, but I think this song finds near-perfect application in the relationship between Bella Baxter and Duncan Wedderburn. An older, ornery man with a good amount of style and rakishness and a young, vivacious woman who enjoys him anyhow, for a while at least.

“Carey” is the homing instinct when abroad, the understanding that vacation must end, and the ornery old man who must be left behind. So, dance on the elevated surface and enjoy your May. Cheers!

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“Maybe it’s been too long a time / Since I was scramblin’ down in the street / Now they got me used to that clean white linen / And that fancy French cologne.”

“Blue”

All roads lead home. Title track. Hand on purple heart, ink on a pin. I guess hell isn’t the hippest way to go? Plunky piano, lilting high notes, there is your song from me. This song plays before the last candle sputters out in a deserted church, of that I am sure.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“Blue / Songs are like tattoos / You know I’ve been to sea before / Crown and anchor me / Or let me sail away.”

“California”

This song is partly cloudy. It is the last day of a trip… maybe you’re a little sick of the people you’ve been traveling with but it’s also a beautiful day and you’re also overwhelmed with homesickness but you’re also overwhelmed with pre-trip-nostalgia nostalgia and prone to bouts of happy sad tears.

This one has at turns been my favorite on the album. It plunks on like a sweet little summer day with just enough melancholy to be believable. I like listening to it best on the bus on the way to the grocery store.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“Still a lot of lands to see / But I wouldn’t wanna stay here / It’s too old and cold and settled in its ways here.”

“He cooked good omelets and stews / And I might have stayed on with him there / But my heart cried out for you, California.”

“Oh, it gets so lonely / When you’re walking / And the streets are full of strangers / All the news of home you read / More about the war / And the bloody changes.”

“This Flight Tonight”

Okay, so, “My Old Man” might be the song of long-distance as a whole but “This Flight Tonight” is the song you listen to when you’re flying away from them. It is one of my favored rituals, couldn’t endorse it enough. It’s also good simply for missing people in any place you may be leaving.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“Sometimes I think love is just mythical.”

“Come on, light the candle in this poor heart of mine.”

“River”

My favorite Christmas song. Forever. I like a little melancholy in my tunes around the holiday season unless it’s choral music or “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Featuring discordant “Jingle Bells” based chords and the discordance of winter holidays in a place without cold or snow. This song is Amy March falling through the ice and Jo admitting to being lonely. It’s romantic and sad and, well, I hope you’ve already heard it and if you haven’t, you should get on it this Wednesday, it’s slated to snow.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“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.”

“I’m so hard to handle, I’m selfish and I’m sad.”

“A Case of You”

I could write an entire play about this song. Sonnets. A novel, perhaps. Some of the greatest lines ever. I won’t labor you with any more of my thoughts. Simply…

Ouchiest Line(s) - in the BEST way

“Just before our love got lost you said / “I am as constant as a northern star,” and I said / “Constantly in the darkness / Where’s that at? / If you want me, I’ll be in the bar” / On the back of a cartoon coaster / In the blue TV screen light / I drew a map of Canada / Oh Canada / With your face sketched on it twice / Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine / You taste so bitter and so sweet / Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling / And I would still be on my feet / Oh, I would still be on my feet / Oh, I am a lonely painter / I live in a box of paints / I’m frightened by the devil / And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid / I remember that time you told me, you said / “Love is touching souls” / Surely you touched mine / ‘Cause part of you pours out of me / In these lines from time to time / Oh, you’re in my blood like holy wine / You taste so bitter and so sweet / Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling / Still I’d be on my feet / I would still be on my feet / I met a woman / She had a mouth like yours, she knew your life / She knew your devils and your deeds / And she said, “Go to him, stay with him if you can / But be prepared to bleed” / Oh, but you are in my blood, you’re my holy wine / You’re so bitter, bitter and so sweet / Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling / Still I would be on my feet / I would still be on my feet.”

I want you guys to know, I typed this entire thing out because that is what it deserves.

“The Last Time I Saw Richard”

It doesn’t get better for everyone after high school. College. Career. Retirement. Think an elevated version of Taylor Swift’s “Mean.” Think mean old drunk and you’re not sure if you’re even better than him anyway.

Ouchiest Line(s) - in a good way

“Richard, you haven’t really changed,” I said / “It’s just that now you’re romanticizing some pain that’s in your head / You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs you punched are dreaming / Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet.”

Thank you for listening. If anything at all here sat well with you, please go listen to Blue and then tell me all about it.