When she first started recording the album in Los Angeles (with famous friend\u00a0Stephen Stills<\/a> and current\u00a0boyfriend\u00a0James Taylor <\/a>helping out on a handful of songs, along with pedal steel player Sneaky Pete Kleinow and drummer Russ Kunkel), Mitchell was unsure which direction her fourth album was heading. Songs were recorded and later cut from the album, replaced by newer numbers that better reflected her state of mind at the time.<\/p>\n Blue<\/em> is as much about her breakup with Nash as it is her relationship with other men of the period, including Taylor, even though the couple was history by the time the album came out. The pieces come together like a fractured heart trying to mend itself.<\/p>\n Mitchell didn’t try to hide any of this. The hurt you hear in some of the songs came from a very real place, as did the joy found in others. In songs like “Carey,” “California,” “River,” “A Case of You” and the title track, Mitchell paints a portrait of a life in shambles, in heartbreak, in excitement and in love. (Many of the joyous pieces were written about a man Mitchell met <\/a>during a quick retreat to Greece in 1970\u00a0following\u00a0her breakup with Nash.)<\/p>\n There was more to Blue<\/em> than just veiled accounts of Mitchell’s flings. There were songs about the daughter she gave up for adoption in 1965 (“Little Green”), homesickness (“California”) and her early marriage (“The Last Time I Saw Richard”). Nobody ever opened up so much on record before. Not Carole King<\/a>, whose equally game-shifting singer-songwriter album\u00a0Tapestry<\/a><\/em> was released just four months earlier, and certainly not any of her male contemporaries.<\/p>\n Blue<\/em>\u00a0became Mitchell’s highest-charting album at the time, reaching No. 15 (in her native Canada, she cracked the Top 10 for the first time). “Carey” and “California” were both released as singles, but only the former charted, peaking at No. 93.<\/p>\n Yet its influence was felt almost immediately. Her friends and peers celebrated her openness, her complex guitar tunings and her willingness to take music into a bold new direction.<\/p>\n With the charts dominated by macho braggarts like the Rolling Stones<\/a>‘ Sticky Fingers<\/a><\/em> and Rod Stewart<\/a>‘s Every Picture Tells a Story<\/a><\/em>, both of which sandwiched Tapestry<\/em>\u00a0in the No. 1 spot in 1971, Blue<\/em> not only revealed rare vulnerability, but it was also willing to take responsibility for its creator’s\u00a0fuck ups. Nobody else was doing that.<\/p>\n All these years later, singer-songwriters of all sorts (sensitive, insensitive, confessional, regretful) can be traced back to Mitchell’s masterpiece. A new era begins here.<\/p>\n Individuality set her apart from other singer-songwriters in the ’70s.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gallery Credit: Michael Galluci<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nListen to Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case of You’<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Listen to Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Joni Mitchell Albums Ranked<\/h2>\n