Joni Mitchell

Listening to these bare-bones sketches, I suddenly understood how the sonic and harmonic ambition of that record wasn’t surface-level affectation but written into the fabric of the songs themselves from the start. Hissing’s complexity wasn’t just 1970s excess, it was a masterpiece of word, sound and thought in Swiss-watch alignment. (...)

Discovering Prince was an obsessive Joni fan – covering her, writing her into his lyrics, unsuccessfully pitching songs to her – blew the whole issue out of the water. Who needs the white rock canon, anyway? Not Joni, for one. Given she was as close musically and personally to Charles Mingus and Herbie Hancock as to Bob Dylan or Carly Simon, isn’t it great that her lineage can be traced through Prince, Chaka Khan and Kate Bush to Outkast, Frank Ocean, James Blake? 

Joni Mitchell: how rock misogyny made me into a militant fan (Joe Muggs, The Guardian)

[ed. From: “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” Demos released recently. Just a guitar and piano.]