Subnostr

“Raditz and Mitchell shared a cave for a couple of months, travelled around Greece together, and parted ways. That’s where you and I come in, because Mitchell wrote two songs, among her greatest works, about her “redneck on a Grecian isle”: “California” and “Carey.” I’ve been singing along to those songs, or trying to, since I was fifteen. I learned from them what you learn from all of Mitchell’s music, that love is a form of reciprocity, at times even a barter economy: “He gave me back my smile / but he kept my camera to sell.” Mitchell’s songs were the final, clinching trade.” Joni Mitchell’s Openhearted Heroism https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/joni-mitchells-openhearted-heroism

Katrin 2y ago

“That freedom was hard-won. Men often wanted Mitchell to be a wife, a muse, a siren, or a star. Instead, they got a genius, and one especially suited to deconstructing their fantasies of her. When David Geffen, her manager, implored her to write a hit, she came up with “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” which mocks the request while heedlessly fulfilling it:

I come when you whistle

When you’re loving and kind

If you’ve got too many doubts

If there’s no good reception for me

Then tune me out, ’cause honey

Who needs the static

It hurts the head

And you wind up cracking

And the day goes dismal

From “Breakfast Barney”

To the sign-off prayer”

~Dan Chiasson

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Katrin 2y ago

“Her tunes wander and veer; they manage their own beauty, bringing it forth at variable intervals. She wanted to create what she called “plateaus” for her lyrics, spans that she could prolong or cut short depending on the demands of her words and the emotional content that they ferried. In “A Case of You,” a song about Leonard Cohen, the lyrics turn on two reported fragments of speech. Both contain literary allusions; Mitchell was drawn to Cohen’s bookishness:

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”