Joni Mitchell to End Her Musical Career

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From the LA Times:
Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell says her new "Travelogue" album, due Tuesday, will be the final destination on her three decade-plus pop music journey.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer tells W Magazine in its December issue that her disgust with the music industry's relentless pursuit of trendiness has prompted her to give up songwriting. "What would I do? Get hair extensions and a choreographer?" she asks. "It's not my world."

Mitchell has expressed her desire to channel her artistic energies into the painting she has always done in addition to her music.

Ok, I know ILM isn't full of Joni lovers (I'm one), but I thought I'd report this anyway. My question is, why can't she carry on selling her music to her established audience? Is she upset that her label can't market her records to a new audience? Many performers her age continue to record and sell to a healthy niche market. In fact, except for the mega-stars of the top-40, isn't everyone selling to a niche market? In any case, since her last couple albums of original material were so very good, I'm hoping the new one continues this creative streak. And of course, she'll be missed.

― Sean (Sean), Friday, 15 November 2002 22:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't get it either. It's not like she's some struggling young artist trying to compete with Britney or whoever. I doubt there's anyone in the music industry who doesn't know who Joni Mitchell is (except Avril Lavigne obv). She probably just needs a break. I'm sure we'll hear from her again.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 15 November 2002 22:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Sounds pretty damn petulant to me on her part. A band like the Walkabouts has been going now for almost twenty years without anything like the attention she's had over the moons. Hell, Janis Ian has more of a sense of doing what she still wants to do -- and has more intelligent things to say about the state of the business than the usual 'the record labels don't understand me!' -- than Joni does.

That said, the painting thing makes me think she's pulling a Beefheart!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 15 November 2002 22:55 (twenty-two years ago)

If Dolly Parton, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and other '60s vets can still make records, why can't Joni Mitchell? Interesting to note that all of the above either stopped worrying about keeping up with current trends, or never cared in the first place. Perhaps Joni needs to take the same route.

― mike a (mike a), Friday, 15 November 2002 23:03 (twenty-two years ago)

She's always been a bit of whiner, though. What's the concert film where she chastises the crowd for not listening to her? Anyone? I say, let her get in her goddamned big yellow taxi and drive the fuck off.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 15 November 2002 23:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Isle of Wight Festival:

"You're acting like a bunch of tourists!"

Great documentary.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 15 November 2002 23:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't understand it either. Maybe she needs more time to devote to cigarette smoking.

― dan (dan), Friday, 15 November 2002 23:36 (twenty-two years ago)

If Joni Mitchell,Leonard Cohen and Neil Young keep making records,why can't Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan and other '60s vets who suck stop?

― brg30 (brg30), Friday, 15 November 2002 23:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Isle of Wight Festival:

"You're acting like a bunch of tourists!"

Great documentary.

Joni was right-on, too. Fukken French anarchists only came to see Emerson, Lake & Palmer anyway and then ruined it for everyone else...

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Saturday, 16 November 2002 01:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah obv Joni's comparing herself to the wrong people (why *should* she consider herself in competition with Britney? When have people thirty+ years into their musical careers ever dominated popular culture?), but in some ways I think she's right to bow out. More because her music for the last twenty years has been so sadly inferior to her early work than for any other reason though.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 16 November 2002 04:34 (twenty-two years ago)

uh "Got 'Til It's Gone" saw her on the Billboard Top 10 only a couple years ago fer chrissakes! That's hardly shabby.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 16 November 2002 04:38 (twenty-two years ago)

oh come on spencer, that's like saying the jackson 5 were on the billboard charts when "o.p.p." hit...

― jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 16 November 2002 04:42 (twenty-two years ago)

don't forget Kriss Kross jess!

All I'm saying is that there's a market for her songwriting skillz, she just needs to hook up with Rodney Jerkins and market herself correctly. I'm sure there were teeny-bop stars who envied her folksy success when it that was the sound du jour.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 16 November 2002 04:47 (twenty-two years ago)

and "Got til it's gone" was much closer to her original than OPP.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 16 November 2002 04:48 (twenty-two years ago)

don't get me wrong, i don't think she should "quit" (full disclosure: i don't think i've ever heard a joni mitchell song in full, so she could be a plague upon all the earth of biblical proportions for all i know, but somehow her general milquetoast qualities make me doubt that...), but i do agree that she should stop fucking whining about it. the rodney jerkins idea is a good one (but only if all the songs sounded like "what about us?" ho ho.)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 16 November 2002 04:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Thats odd, her last album Both Sides Now (I always nicknamed it Blue Again for some reason) got a fair bit of press, more so then Neil Young's recent work since Year of The Horse.
Maybe she didnt want to just come out and say the muse has left her.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Saturday, 16 November 2002 06:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Joni needs a root

― Queen G (Queeng), Saturday, 16 November 2002 10:45 (twenty-two years ago)

they WERE a bunch of tourists!! they'd travelled to the isle of wight to see the festival!!

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 16 November 2002 11:58 (twenty-two years ago)

This is good news. I can finally die without worrying about not getting to hear the next Joni Mitchell release.

― methusala, Saturday, 16 November 2002 12:46 (twenty-two years ago)

a great pity, though tim f's comments upthread are pretty spot-on. still, at least she's been responsible for at least half-a-dozen utterly brilliant records, and that's half-a-dozen more than most of the fuckers who typically embody the sort of fickleness i presume she's railing against. it's just a shame to see her exit out of bitterness.

― angelo (angelo), Saturday, 16 November 2002 13:57 (twenty-two years ago)

"they WERE a bunch of tourists!! they'd travelled to the isle of wight to see the festival!!"

Yeah? Well what does that make her, then? Did *SHE* live there? Ms.Pot, call on line two for you from a Mrs.Kettle!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 16 November 2002 17:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Reminds me of what Pauline Kael said when asked what the upside of leaving film criticism was.
"I'll never have to go see a Oliver Stone film again."

― Jim McGaw, Saturday, 16 November 2002 19:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe she should join Brian Blade's band full time.

― Jordan (Jordan), Saturday, 16 November 2002 19:43 (twenty-two years ago)

i didn't know she was still making records.

― keith (keithmcl), Sunday, 17 November 2002 03:01 (twenty-two years ago)

hey alex, why do the pot and kettle have to be women? are you racist

― boxcubed (boxcubed), Sunday, 17 November 2002 03:12 (twenty-two years ago)

three years pass...

Seems like she stuck to her decision...

― Baaderonixx, born again in Xixax (baaderonixx), Friday, 3 February 2006 11:23 (nineteen years ago)

I'm sure there were other mitigating circumstances anyway. Joni suffers from a pretty severe form of arthritis (or some similarly crippling problem) that forced her to custom-build these super-thin, lightweight guitars for the last decade of her career. And when I first heard Travelogue, I was mortified to hear what a smokers' husk her voice had become. I used to glamorize Billie Holiday's fucked-up, abuse-ravaged voice, but once I heard it coming out of Joni, I was pretty devastated. All in all, her capacity for performance - Britney or no Britney - is severely diminished, which has to have an unspoken impact on her decision.* And although I recognize that Joni's "classic" works sounded just as MOR and daiquiri-smooth in their heyday, there's a certain crystalline flawlessness to her '90s output that just irks me. Not like I expect her to make a Merzbow record or anything, but all of her other contemporaries have gotten "back to basics," sonically speaking, at some point or another, even if only as a bandwagon-chasing gesture in our post-Cash American Recordings universe. But she just kept churning out these technically flawless, mid-'80s-L.A. albums, even when the material perhaps deserved a more judicious hand.

(*Of course, I've since come around to thinking that Travelogue may be the most gorgeous, elegiac swan song I've ever heard, but obviously there's a lot of personal emotional punch there. I do think Joni has always suffered from a severe bout of "Thou doth protest too much," but the notes of weariness and resignation in her lyrics have rarely sounded as true and lived-in as they do on Travelogue. And the orchestral arrangements are truly imaginative, even on the untouchable, "classic" material.)

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Friday, 3 February 2006 12:13 (nineteen years ago)

ha ha big x-post!

I recently read an interview with her from maybe a year ago (conducted by Camille Paglia, no less) where she said that she basically stoped writing new songs about seven years ago when she was reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption (the one "Little Green" on Blue is about) - like, this filled up some hole in her life which had been the creative wellspring.

And it made sense, I thought: I remember (from reading stuff on her, back when i cared that deeply) that all the tunes from her last "proper" album (Taming of the Tiger) had been banging about since about 1996 if not earlier, and while she's performed and recorded since then she hasn't released any new songs I don't think.

(I never heard Taming of the Tiger, is it any good? I bought Turbulent Indigo but sold it because something about it irritated me, too didactic and MOR for me at the time. This was 1996 though and I might like it more now. Hearing the re-recorded version of "Both Sides Now" used in Love Actually makes me think I'd like to have a whole album of her latterday cigarette-fucked vocals)

I haven't bought them but I don't like the repackaged comps she's been making, a cursory glance at the tracklisting suggests that they're not nearly as thematically or sonically cohesive as she'd like us to think they are, they're really random hodge-podges.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Friday, 3 February 2006 12:16 (nineteen years ago)

There's a great moment in that Paglia interview where Joni is talking about writing poetry as a kid, and Paglia editorialises, "So, you could have been a poet, but instead you went to the piano and became a songwriter", and Joni (obviously bristling) says something like "are you saying what I do isn't poetry?", and Camille is like "oh no! I wasn't saying that! I just meant that..." etc. etc., and you can just hear her nervous gulps and hand flutters leap off the print on the page.

Camille who not even Julie Burchill could tame!

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Friday, 3 February 2006 12:35 (nineteen years ago)

I've only bough the wintery "Songs of a Prairie Girl" and, while it's not that thematically cohesive, it goes down very well and the 90's stuff works in that context.

― Baaderonixx, born again in Xixax (baaderonixx), Friday, 3 February 2006 14:15 (nineteen years ago)

eight months pass...

Move over Jay-Z, Joni's apparently coming out of retirement to slam them fake prophets!

http://www.jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1460

― Baaderonixx in the year of the locusts (baaderonixx), Friday, 20 October 2006 08:47 (eighteen years ago)

ok attention people with wonderful singing voices please don't smoke as much as Joni did thank you

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Friday, 20 October 2006 12:17 (eighteen years ago)

and stay away from drugs too!

http://www.jonimitchell.com/artwork/view.cfm?id=20

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 20 October 2006 12:33 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dungeon/4078/malachai2.jpg

― Dr. Alicia D. Titsovich (sexyDancer), Friday, 20 October 2006 14:32 (eighteen years ago)

"Joni suffers from a pretty severe form of arthritis (or some similarly crippling problem) that forced her to custom-build these super-thin, lightweight guitars for the last decade of her career."

Er, Ken Parker built those guitars, and you can buy one yourself at your local guitar shop.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

i like that painting.

i've been listening to hejira a lot lately. it's great. although jaco pastorious never fails to piss me off. his bass tone irratates me to no end.

― M@tt He1geson: Real Name, No Gimmicks (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:23 (eighteen years ago)

I like her new voice. It suits the stuff on Travelogue, anyways.

― A Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:31 (eighteen years ago)

I would consider her a whiny idiot if she wasn't so damned good.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

x-post: OTM, except the past ten years have really been teh suck.

― trees (treesessplode), Friday, 20 October 2006 21:36 (eighteen years ago)

I would consider her a whiny idiot if she wasn't so damned good.

i'm reasonably sure those two states can easily co-exist.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 20 October 2006 22:16 (eighteen years ago)

three months pass...

Joni Mitchell interview in the NY Times where she talks about her new projects and more (plus the writer notes that she does not have a cellphone, voicemail,and a computer; likes to dance and still loves to smoke cigarettes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/arts/dance/04yaff.html?th&emc=th
Working Three Shifts, and Outrage Overtime
By DAVID YAFFE

"The Fiddle and the Drum,” her choreographic collaboration with the Alberta Ballet, opens on Feb. 8 in Calgary. Meanwhile “Flag Dance,” an installation of her antiwar mixed-media art, has finished a two-month run at the Lev Moross Gallery in West Hollywood, and she has recently recorded enough new songs for an album, which she plans to call either “Strange Birds of Appetite” or “If.”

― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Monday, 5 February 2007 21:23 (eighteen years ago)

Dylan’s not a dancer,” Ms. Mitchell added. “I am.”

― is anyone anticipating the new Baaderonixx? (baaderonixx), Monday, 5 February 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

tbh, her new stuff sounds like a epic disaster in the making. "Holy earth/How can we heal you". Err..?

― is anyone anticipating the new Baaderonixx? (baaderonixx), Monday, 5 February 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

I think it sounds rather good and that you've picked the two worst lines - she's always leaned a little hard on platitudes but her gift for melody & her phrasing generally makes up for it/renders the cornier lines downright palatable

that said, the writer says that her tunings/chords "defy western musical theory," which is just total bullshit - her tunings & chords are totally awesome for sure, but the chords she makes from them are squarely in the jazz chord voicing tradition

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Monday, 5 February 2007 22:06 (eighteen years ago)

You're right, although the writer's silence w/r/t the new tracks is a bit conspicuous...

― is anyone anticipating the new Baaderonixx? (baaderonixx), Monday, 5 February 2007 22:22 (eighteen years ago)

lots of entertaining quotes:

“I’m working three shifts,” Ms. Mitchell, 63, said. “I’m doing the work of four 20-year-olds. Between the art show and the ballet and the new album, I’ve never worked so hard in my life.”

"For the last several weeks she had been sleeping by day and recording songs for her new album from dusk till dawn. If she had a spare moment, she scribbled notes about the ballet set. Music, art, dance: Ms. Mitchell calls it “crop rotation.”

One song she’s still revising is called “Shine.”

“It starts, ‘Shine on Vegas and Wall Street/Place your bets,’ ” she said. “You could write a thousand verses. ‘Shine on the dazzling darkness that mends us when we sleep/Shine on what we throw away and what we keep.’ I have written about 60 different verses and rhyming couplets to this thing, and I’ve kept 12. Are they the best ones? I don’t know. I could write 60 a week. What are the 12 most important things to illuminate? It’s overwhelming.”

― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

six months pass...

Joni Mitchell - Shine

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2941/31fxgcmvtplss500zd2.jpg

http://music.guardian.co.uk/folk/story/0,,2037337,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6532705.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shine_(Joni_Mitchell_album)

― fandango, Monday, 3 September 2007 17:53 (eighteen years ago)

Joni Mitchell - Shine

a thread of it's own^ might be better.

― fandango, Monday, 3 September 2007 17:57 (eighteen years ago)

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