Music Listening Session #5 – Joni Mitchell’s Blue (1971)

“The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals,” Joni Mitchell told Rolling Stone in 1979. “At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either...”

Joni Mitchell’s Blue stands as one of the most intimate and finely crafted albums in modern music. Released in 1971, it captures a rare blend of emotional candor, poetic craft, and melodic invention, tracing themes of love, heartbreak, and self-discovery with unguarded honesty. Its spare arrangements place Mitchell’s luminous voice at the forefront and its remarkable songwriting drew from jazz as much as folk, shaping a sound that expanded the boundaries of the singer-songwriter tradition. Over the decades, Blue has become a touchstone for artists across genres and a landmark in music history — an album often cited as a pinnacle of personal expression in recorded form.

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New-ish series! At each session, we'll get together to listen to and discuss some of the greatest and most important albums of all time across different genres and eras. After each track we'll pause for a short discussion where we can share our thoughts and reflections or what the music has meant to us personally. We've had a great time discussing 4 albums so far.

I'll have lyrics up on Zoom's screen share.

For our 5th session let's listen to Joni Mitchell's masterpiece Blue, the perfect album for December. I never fail to be blown away by just how good this album is.

Albums we've previously discussed:

1. Nirvana's Nevermind (1991)
2. Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (1982)
3. Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush (1970)
4. Radiohead’s OK Computer (1997)

Potential future listening sessions:

• The Beach Boys
• Massive Attack
• Bob Dylan
• Pavement
• Wilco
• The Beatles
• David Bowie
• Sonic Youth
• Kraftwerk
• The Velvet Underground
• Patti Smith
• Prince
• Marvin Gaye
• Lauryn Hill
• Aphex Twin
• The Pixies
• Sex Pistols
• The Clash
• The Smiths
• Joy Division
• Primal Scream
• DJ Shadow
• Public Enemy
• Aretha Franklin
• Talking Heads
• Fleetwood Mac
• Arcade Fire
• Kendrick Lamar
• The Streets
• The Strokes
• Built To Spill
• Bjork
• Nine Inch Nails
• Sufjan Stevens
• ETC...