Joni Mitchell - Songwriter, Singer - Biography.com Joni Mitchell Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, responsible for hits such as "Both Sides Now" and "Big Yellow Taxi," is widely considered 1960s and '70s folk royalty. IN THESE GROUPS » quotes “I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.” “America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill.” “I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.” “The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.” Joni Mitchell Joni Mitchell - Mini Biography (TV-14; 2:50) Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, responsible for hits such as "Both Sides Now" and "Big Yellow Taxi," is widely considered 1960s and '70s folk royalty.

Synopsis Joni Mitchell was born on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Canada. In 1968, she recorded her first, self-titled album. Other highly successful albums followed. Mitchell won her first Grammy Award (best folk performance) for her 1969 album, Clouds. She has won seven more Grammy Awards since then, in several different categories, including traditional pop, pop music and lifetime achievement. Joni Mitchell, 1968. (Photo: Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Early Music Career Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Canada. At the age of 9, Mitchell contracted polio, and it was during her recovery in the hospital that she began performing and singing to patients. After teaching herself how to play the guitar, she went off to art college and quickly emerged as one of the leading folk performers of the late 1960s and '70s. At the beginning of her career, Mitchell's compositions were highly original and personal in their lyrical imagery.

It was this style that first attracted attention among folk-music audiences in Toronto while she was still in her teens. She moved to the United States in the mid-1960s, and in 1968, she recorded her first album, Joni Mitchell, produced by David Crosby. Experimental Explorations Other highly successful albums followed. Joni Mitchell won her first Grammy Award (best folk performance) in 1969, for her sophomore album, Clouds. Her third album, Ladies of the Canyon, was a mainstream success for the folk singer, becoming her first gold album, which included the hits "The Circle Game" and "Big Yellow Taxi." It was during this time she was already starting to experiment with pop and rock genres. Her album Court and Spark (1974) signaled her foray into jazz and jazz fusion and was lauded by critics; it ended up becoming her most commercially successful project to date and was nominated for four Grammy Awards, of which Mitchell won for best instrumental arrangement accompanying vocalist(s). Over the past four decades, Mitchell has garnered several Grammys in various categories, including traditional pop, pop music and lifetime achievement.

Her other notable successful recordings include Blue (1971), The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975), the highly experimental Hejira (1976) and Turbulent Indigo (1994). Mitchell wasn’t the only one making hits with the songs she wrote. Other musicians have recorded successful covers of her songs, including Judy Collins; the Counting Crows; and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Joni MItchell performing in 2001. (Photo by David Redfern/Redferns ) Later Work Mitchell's later albums include Taming the Tiger (1998), Both Sides Now (2000) and the compilation albums Dreamland (2004) and Songs of a Prairie Girl (2005). In addition to her own extensive body of work, she has been an enormous influence on several other artists with her unique guitar styling and expressive lyrics. Mitchell was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame in 1997 and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.

Retirement & Health Issues In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2002, Mitchell announced she was retiring due to her frustration with the music industry, referring to it as a "cesspool." However, she didn't adhere to her statement, as she became busier than ever with the release of various compilations consisting of her earlier works. In 2007 she released Shine, her first album of new songs in almost a decade. Politically charged and environmentally conscious, the album was a Billboard success and was Mitchell's nineteenth and final studio album. Besides claiming her voice has faltered from complications due to polio and a compressed larynx, Mitchell then dealt with other health issues. She sought treatment for Morgellons disease, which is described as “an uncommon, unexplained skin disorder characterized by sores, crawling sensations on and under the skin, and fiber-like filaments emerging from the sores,” according to the Mayo Clinic . In 2015, Mitchell experienced another health crisis. News broke in late March that the singer had been hospitalized. Some reports later indicated that she was in a coma, but a spokesperson for the singer corrected that error.

Leslie Morris, a friend of Mitchell's, was appointed her conservator by a California judge in May. That June, singer David Crosby claimed that Mitchell was unable to talk in an interview with the Huffington Post. Morris, through JoniMitchell.com , released a statement to clarify Mitchell's condition. She acknowledged that the singer had suffered an aneurysm, but was expected to make a "full recovery." Morris also addressed Crosby's comment, saying that "Joni is speaking, and she's speaking well. She is not walking yet, but she will be in the near future as she is undergoing daily therapies. She is resting comfortably in her own home and she's getting better each day." Personal Life While an art student in college, Mitchell got pregnant and gave birth to Kelly Dale Anderson in 1965. The birth father refused to marry Mitchell, and she felt she had no choice but to give her daughter up for adoption. The adoptive parents renamed the baby girl Kilaruen Gibb. After keeping her daughter a secret and being separated from her for over 30 years, Mitchell reunited with her in 1997.

A few weeks after giving birth to Kilaruen, Mitchell met American folk singer Chuck Mitchell and married him 36 hours after meeting him. The couple left for Michigan where they had an official ceremony in June 1965 and she took his last name. They divorced two years later. In 1982 Mitchell married bassist Larry Klein, who worked on her album Wild Things Run Fast. Klein soon became an established music producer and worked on a number of Mitchell's albums throughout the late '80s and early '90s. While the couple worked on Turbulent Indigo, they eventually divorced in 1994. The following year Turbulent Indigo won a Grammy for best pop album. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

Citation Information Joni Mitchell - Biography - IMDb Joni Mitchell Biography Showing all 38 items Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trade Mark (4) | Trivia (19) | Personal Quotes (9) Overview (3) 5' 6" (1.68 m) Mini Bio (1) Joni Mitchell is one of the most highly regarded and influential songwriters of the 20th century. Her melodious tunes support her poetic and often very personal lyrics to make her one of the most authentic artists of her time. As a performer she is widely hailed for her unique style of playing guitar. Mitchell's unflinching struggle for her own artistic independence has made her a role model for many other musicians, and somewhat of a bane to music industry executives. She is critical of the industry and of the shallowness that she sees in much of today's popular music. Mitchell is also a noted painter and has created the beautiful artwork that appears on the packaging of her music albums.

Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, to Myrtle Marguerite (McKee), a teacher, and William Andrew Anderson, a RCAF flight lieutenant and grocer. Her father was of Norwegian descent, and her mother had Irish and Scottish ancestry. Mitchell first became famous for penning "Both Sides Now", a song that helped launch the career of pop/folk singer Judy Collins . When Mitchell began as a songwriter many of her lyrics displayed a wisdom that was precocious for someone who was in her early twenties. Mitchell was first noticed as a performer in New York City's music scene. Her first album appeared in 1968, which featured her voice and her acoustic guitar with virtually no other accompaniment on most songs. She became romantically involved with David Crosby and later Graham Nash , both of the majorly successful West Coast rock group Crosy, Stills and Nash. Mitchell literally wrote the theme song for the historic mega-concert Woodstock.

Arguably her most popular song from this era may be "Big Yellow Taxi" with its well-known lyrics: "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot". Mitchell's music was originally considered to be folk, but after her initial success she began to grow in a jazz direction. Her collaboration with saxophonist and band leader Tom Scott produced the album "Court and Spark", one of the most popular and influential albums of all time. As her music style veered increasingly towards jazz, Mitchell sadly observed that her pop/folk fans did not follow her to the new musical place she was going to. The sales of her later albums declined. Nonetheless her work was still followed by many within the music industry. Mitchell worked closely with jazz great Charles Mingus on his last project. She did several albums with jazz bass player Jaco Pastorius, and several more with her second husband, musician and sound engineer Larry Klein . The most popular songs in her career include Big Yellow Taxi, Both Sides Now, Help Me, River, and A Case of You.

Her most popular albums include Court and Spark, Hejira, Turbulent Indigo, and Blue. Joni Mitchell's influence on other musicians has been so broad that it is difficult to summarize. She has been a notable influence on Prince , Elvis Costello , George Michael , Madonna , Sheryl Crow , Morissey , Seal , Beck , Cassandra Wilson , Diana Krall and a great many of other women songwriters that are too numerous to mention. Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" is an homage to Mitchell. Mitchell's songs have been covered by the likes of Bob Dylan , Mandy Moore , Minnie Riperton , Frank Sinatra , the Counting Crows, Linda Ronstadt , Neil Diamond , Tori Amos , the Spin Doctors, Nazareth, the Indigo Girls, and many more. Mitchell's music made an appearance in the movie Love Actually (2003) . In this mostly comedic film, actress Emma Thompson 's character is a fan of Joni Mitchell's music. At one point in the movie, Thompson's character discovers that she has been betrayed by her husband for a much younger woman.

She puts on a brave face for the kids, but her moment of private, painful revelation is shown on screen accompanied by an audio track that is silent except for an overdub of Joni Mitchell singing "Both Sides Now", not the original upbeat recording from the 1960s when Mitchell was a 23-year-old ingénue, but rather the recent re-recording, a somber sentimental performance by the now husky-voiced middle-aged Mitchell, backed by a lush orchestra -- a performance akin to an older, wiser Frank Sinatra singing the retrospective "It Was A Very Good Year" when he was sixty. This poignant scene is the dramatic pinnacle of the film. Joni Mitchell remains a role model to artists everywhere. Her paintings are being shown in various galleries and on tours, and she is releasing an album of new music in 2007. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Roger Burns <rogerburns@pobox.com> Spouse (2) The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell Songfacts The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell Songfacts Songfacts In this poetic song, Joni Mitchell tells the story of a child's journey to adulthood.

The uses a carousel as a metaphor for the years that go by, pointing out how we can look back, but we can't return to our past. The song opens with the young boy enjoying the wonder of youth, but looking forward to getting older. In the second verse, he is 16 and driving. The final verse finds him at 20, with his dreams tempered a bit, but still with high hopes for his future. This was partly written in response to Neil Young's song about lost innocence " Sugar Mountain ," where Young sings, "You can't be 20 on Sugar Mountain." Mitchell's last verse is a rejoinder of sorts, with the 20-year-old facing diminished dreams but still with plenty of hope. Young and Mitchell are both from Canada and met in the mid-'60s. The folk singer Tom Rush recorded this song, making it the title track of his 1968 album, which also included songs written by the soon-to-be-famous Jackson Browne and James Taylor. This was a breakthrough for Mitchell, who spent much of 1967 performing in Philadelphia and Toronto as she built up her career.

Rush saw her perform in Detroit that year, and recorded "The Circle Game" along with two other Mitchell compositions for the album: "Urge For Going" and "Tin Angel." Buffy Sainte-Marie was the first to record this song, including it on her 1967 album Fire & Fleet & Candlelight. Soon after, Sainte-Marie's manager Elliot Roberts took on Joni Mitchell as a client after seeing her perform. Roberts got Mitchell a record deal with Reprise in 1968; her solo career took off and she became one of most acclaimed singer-songwriters of her generation. Mitchell's version wasn't released until 1970 when it appeared on her album Ladies Of The Canyon, but she had been playing it for years at her concerts. The song got a lot of attention when she performed it at The Troubadour in Los Angeles at a series of shows in the summer of 1968. Although it was never a big hit, this became one of Mitchell's most popular songs. Later in her career, she left it off the set lists at most of her concerts because she wanted to play songs that weren't as well known to her fans.

In a 1994 interview with Mojo, Mitchell said: "I didn't write 'Circle Game' as a children's song, but I'm very pleased to see it go into the culture in that way." The line "The painted ponies go up and down" gave David Clayton-Thomas the idea for the lyric "Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel spin" in the Blood, Sweat & Tears hit " Spinning Wheel ." "I've always been a huge Joni Mitchell fan," he told us. "As a writer, she was one of my early influences." This is one of Mitchell's most-covered songs, with over 200 artists recording it. Among them: Steven Curtis Chapman, Ian McCulloch and Harry Belafonte. Buffy Sainte-Marie's plays at the beginning of the 1970 movie The Strawberry Statement. When the film was released, the song was issued as a single, charting at #109 in the US (this was the only version of the song to chart).

100 Best Canadian Songs Ever 100 Best Canadian Songs Ever The Huffington Post Canada | By Joshua Ostroff, Sarah Kurchak, Aaron Brophy Posted: reddit ADVERTISEMENT Canadian artists have long hit above their weight class in the global music business, from Paul Anka becoming a teen idol in the '50s to Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and The Guess Who emerging as icons of the '60s and '70s while Bryan Adams and Corey Hart ruled the '80s. Then Alanis, Celine, Sarah and Shania took over the world in the '90s and Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo and Sloan became homeland heroes. This is more true today than ever before with Canadian artists like Drake, Arcade Fire, Feist, Michael Buble, Deadmau5 and, yes, Bieber and Nickelback at or near the top of nearly every genre. Still, we thought it would be easier to come up with a best Canadian songs. We had planned on 50, then expanded to 75 and finally called it at 100 and restricted ourselves to one song per act and from the 1950s onward.

Really, we could have done a list ten times this size and still had to cut. While you may or may not agree with all the songs or their placements, we're pretty sure everyone can agree that the diversity and quality of music coming from Canada is something worth celebrating. So please add more songs in the comments if we didn't include your favourites -- and be proud to live in a country that has such an incredible musical history. Close   Underappreciated gal rock act Toronto had a hit with the gals-get-to-cause-trouble song "Your Daddy Don't Know" in 1982. The song experienced a renaissance in 2003 when The New Pornographers covered it for the "FUBAR" movie soundtrack. Yes, it's a theme for a cheesball Canadian TV show from the '80s about a dog who saves people. And yes, you know all the words. Maybe tomorrow we won't like it so much, but until tomorrow we'll just keep listening. Trooper's 1978 arena rock jam "Raise A Little Hell" was the band's only song to become a hit in the U.S.

The song was produced by BTO/Guess Who's Randy Bachman. We make fun of the not so dearly departed Canadian discount department store Zellers, but they did at least one thing right: they picked up this infectious and rollicking 2006 single from Clayton Park, Nova Scotia’s indie folk rock hero Joel Plaskett for a television spot, which made the chain temporarily cool. “Nowhere With You” scored Plaskett Single of the Year and Songwriter of the Year trophies at the 2007 East Coast Music Awards. "The Messenger" was the lead-off track from Daniel Lanois' 1993 album "For The Beauty Of Wynona." Aspiring mystic rockers The Tea Party would cover the song in 1999. This song is a punchline, but Snow's skin colour shouldn't colour our opinions on this radio smash. In hindsight we can appreciate how impressive his rapid-fire toasting actually is, how bold it was back then to shout-out Toronto and how cool it was he collaborated with rap legend MC Shan. Taken from Sweeney Todd's self-titled 1975 album, the glam rock-ish "Roxy Roller" became a number one hit in Canada.

Fun fact: Bryan Adams was part of Sweeney Todd when he was 15 years old. Canada’s R&B and entertainment show queen, Jully Black, scored her first top 20 hit with this sexy single from her 2005 album, "This Is Me." The pride of St. John’s made traditional Newfoundland music cool with their playful and punkish take on the old comic folk song “Mari-Mac” from their 1995 album, "Up." "Rock Me Gently" was a Billboard number one hit for Andy Kim in 1974. The Montreal musician was a noted songwriter, scoring hits with songs like "Sugar Sugar" for The Archies. Kim is currently working on a new album with Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew. Part of Can-Rock's breakout late-'80s scene, "Teenland" gave Canada its own answer to R.E.M.

The band's biggest hit would come three years later with "She Ain't Pretty." “I Cry” is the song that gave North York's Bass is Base a top 40 hit, but the far superior sing-song jam “Funkmobile” is the song that scored the R&B trio their record deal in the first place. It’s also a lot more fun to break out at parties. This hit 1980 single by Toronto new wave artists Martha and the Muffins was so good they named a concert venue after it. Echo Beach, the venue, is located along Toronto’s waterfront, but it’s more fun if you tell people that it's far away in time. One of the all-time classic tributes to the wireless music transmission, Rush's "The Spirit Of Radio" was a worldwide hit from their 1980 album "Permanent Waves." The song was a nod to Toronto alternative radio station CFNY, who were one of the first outlets to play Rush songs.

The second single from Cape Breton native Ashley MacIsaac’s 1995 debut album "Hi, How Are You Today?" Only in Canada could an enfant terrible fiddler hook up with a Celtic folk singer and produce a ridiculously catchy, chart-topping pop hit sung in Scottish Gaelic. This Toronto-based group who had neither an Edward or a Bear in the band, were one of the earliest Canadian acts to sign to a major U.S. label when they joined Capitol Records in 1969. Their 1972 hit "Last Song" reached number one in Canada and number three in the States, their best chart performance. First Nations DJ crew A Tribe Called Red have radically flipped what it means to make aboriginal music, combining modern beats and drops with traditional powwow drums and singing to create something completely new. "Electric Pow Wow Drum" is the signature song for the Ottawa trio. One of the pillars of Toronto's innovative Queen Street scene, The Parachute Club's new wave dance track "Rise Up" was a hit in 1983. The self-titled album this came from was produced by future U2 conductor Daniel Lanois.

One of '80s most iconic songs, "Rock You," with its helpful lesson "Gimme an R-R, O-O, C-C, K-K, whatcha got?" taught hair metallers everywhere how to spell Rock. Years later Sum 41 would cover the song and start a minor feud with the band. Belleville, Ontario’s own Lee Aaron, further cemented her status as the Metal Queen with this 1989 single from her most successful album, "Bodyrock." The record was nominated for Album and Rock Album of the Year at the Junos and “Watcha” received a nomination for Video of the Year. "Working For The Weekend" may get more attention, but leather pant rockers Loverboy's first real hit was "The Kid Is Hot Tonight" from the band's self-titled 1980 debut. Bob Rock, later to become a producer for the likes of Bon Jovi, Metallica and Aerosmith, was an engineer on this album.

Prolific and brilliant Toronto rapper D-Sisive, along with his longtime collaborator Muneshine, won SOCAN’s ECHO Songwriting Prize for this complex and confessional look at his life and career from the 2009 album "Let The Children Die." This 1981 song by the Tom Cochrane-led Red Rider was written to address the wave of anti-Semitism which took place in the late-1970s. Mixed martial arts champ Dan Henderson has used the song as his walkout music before fights. This single from ethereal Toronto singer/songwriter Jane Sibbery’s 1984 album "No Borders Here" accomplished what few seven and a half minute-long art rock epics have ever managed: it received massive radio play and became a breakthrough hit for the ethereal Toronto singer/songwriter. Shad's self-deprecating throwback track captured everything that was right about old-school hip-hop -- clever references, catchy rhymes and a sense of humour. That this song about a grown man too broke to move out was released during the Great Recession adds some strong subext, too.

This Police-style new wave/reggae song "Eyes Of A Stranger" was a Canadian hit in 1982. Perhaps more notable was that the band, anchored by super-producer Bob Rock and Paul Hyde, also featured David Bowie collaborator Mick Ronson and future Last Gang Records owner Chris Taylor at various points. The first track on Skinny Puppy’s first full-length album, "Bites," released in 1985, is one hell of a way to kick off a disc and is the perfect introduction to the Vancouver industrial gods in general. “Assimilate” is Skinny Puppy at their most melodically sinister. This hit 1976 song by Klaatu was inspired by the idea of earthlings trying to contact alien races telepathically. Though written by Canadians and Klaatu band members Terry Draper and John Woloschuk part of the song's success can be attributed to the rumours when it came out that it was a secret Beatles side-project.

This title track from indie supergroup The New Pornographers' 2000 album featured Neko Case on lead vocals.The song has appeared in a number of places, including the TV show "Queer As Folk" and the curling movie "Men With Brooms." This instant synthpop classic from Calgary’s beloved singer/songwriter twins Tegan and Sara was the lead single from their massively successful 2012 album "Heartthrob." The platinum-certified single scored the duo “Single of the Year” honours at the 2014 Junos and got the "Glee" treatment in March of 2013. Think of this song as a dual citizen. It was written by American singer Montell Jordan of “This is How We Do It” fame and his songwriting partner Anthony “Shep” Crawford, but it was performed by Canada’s own R&B star Deborah Cox. It was a massive breakthrough for Cox, topping the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in October of 1998 and staying there for a record 14 weeks. In a perfect world, Toronto indie rock gods Change of Heart would have dominated the airwaves throughout their decades-long career.

In the real world, they did have one moment of unexpected top 40 glory. This beautifully delicate little song from their epic 1992 album, "Smile," briefly charted in Saskatchewan. College rock goofballs the Barenaked Ladies named the titular character of this sweet love gone wrong song from 1994 after the intersection of Jane and St. Clair in Toronto. Stephen Duffy, who cowrote the song with BNL singer Steven Page, thought that it sounded like the most beautiful intersection in the world. Page didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't. This breakthrough single from Toronto electroclash art rocker Peaches’ 2000 album, "The Teaches of Peaches" is about, well, fucking the pain away (and staying in school). The unabashedly dirty and undeniably addictive tune been featured on a bevy of film soundtracks and has been covered of Montreal and Bollo from The Mighty Boosh. Oh, and in "30 Rock" Liz Lemon used it as her ringtone. Toronto indie rock legends The Lowest of the Low were/are one of the smartest, sharpest, and most literate bands that Canada has ever produced.

And this tune from their 1991 debut album, "Shakespeare My Butt," is one of the smartest, sharpest, and most literate songs they ever produced. Vancouver shoegazers Mystery Machine scored their biggest hit with this swirling and swoony single from their second album, "10 Speed." If social media had been around in 1994, all of the indie rock kids would have been tweeting about all of the feels this song gave them. Electro-pop breakout Grimes pairs her chipmunk vocals, la la las and burbly beats, not to mention that adorable video, with dichotomously dark lyrics about the mental aftermath of a sexual assault. With “Sweet Jane,” the sexy and smoky first single the Cowboy Junkies’ debut album, The Trinity Sessions, the Toronto alternative folk band proved that they were good enough to cover a legendary band like The Velvet Underground. With their second single, the haunting and dreaming “A Misguided Angel,” they proved that they were even better when they played their own songs.

This 1996 song from the Toronto rock trio is basically the Platonic Ideal of a Danko Jones song: naughty, boastful, bombastic, and bad ass with a killer rock riff and a refreshing lack of stereotypical Canadian meekness. This 1979 single from London, Ontario’s The Demics was named the greatest Canadian song of all time in Chart Magazine’s inaugural Best Canadian music poll in 1996 and was ranked fifth in a follow-up poll in 2000. In 2014, this punk ode to small-ish town frustration remains as vital as ever, and no Best Canadian Song list worth anything would be complete without it. This song from The Rheos’ beloved and critically acclaimed 1991 album, "Melville," sees the Etobicoke, Ontario rock band at their strangest, most unique and most arresting. The short tune about about a suicidal young man named Joey remains a favourite of disaffected weirdos and art rockers the world over. It didn't take long for Randy Bachman to make his mark when he split from The Guess Who in 1970.

By 1974 BTO were an established band and "Takin' Care Of Business," their ode to getting things done, was a hard rock hit. Oddly, it was their song "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" from next album "Not Fragile" that became an international number one. In the early seventies, Canada had a pretty good reputation for folk music and a burgeoning reputation for rock, but the Great White North wasn’t really known for its boy bands and cheesy pop music. Port Colborne, Ontario’s DeFranco Family did their part to change all of that with this cheesy but catchy as hell ditty that hit number one in 1973 and landed the whole DeFranco family in Tiger Beat. Trip-hop gets a bad rap, which may be why rip-hop duo Esthero have ben laregly forgotten. The late-90s outfit's best song, "Heaven Sent" mixed singer Esthero's breathy, jazz-inflected and progressively tougher vocals over future Weeknd producer Doc's impeccable quiet-loud production and turntable scratcing.

This 1986 hit isn’t just a killer single that becomes more pointed and uncomfortably true with each passing year, it’s also one of the first and best independent success story in Canadian music history. In 1985, a little known band from Toronto recorded a song called “I’m An Adult Now,” filmed an extremely low budget video for it and released both by themselves. It became a massive hit and landed TPOH a record deal. Their debut album, "Love Junk," went platinum in 1988. This track from 54-40’s eponymous second album was a breakthrough college radio hit for the Vancouver band in 1986. It remains the best 54-40 song that Hootie and the Blowfish never covered. The sweet and melancholy title track from The Poppy Family’s 1969 album was the Vancouver psychedelic pop rock band’s biggest hit. It was a number one single in Canada and Ireland, and reached number two of the US charts. The godmother of Canadian hip-hop was the first northern rapper to sign to a U.S.

label and be taken under the wing of an American star (KRS-One) and she did by representing the Tdot's cultural mix with a healthy does of dancehall reggae as this classic single makes crystal clear. Ottawa alt country singer/songwriter sings about eating at Toronto’s infamous Vesta Lunch diner, getting CBC airplay, and being more of a Marty McSorely than a Wayne Gretzky in this clever and thoroughly Canadian single from her critically and commercially successful 2008 album, "Asking For Flowers." This blistering and emotional track from Toronto’s Melanie Fiona topped cracked the Billboard Hot 100, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (the award eventually went to some up-and-comer named Beyonce), and established the singer as an R&B force on both sides of the border. This striking and gorgeous lead track from Zaki Ibrahim’s 2012 album, "Every Opposite," is a fine example of why the Canadian and South African soul and R&B singer garners so much praise, so many prestigious award nominations (including the Polaris 2013 short list), and opening slots for artists like Erykah Badu.

In 1997, an electro-alterna-rock collective from Montreal called Bran Van 3000 came out of nowhere and conquered the Canadian (and U.K.) airwaves with the irresistibly infectious “Drinking In L.A.” It remains the single catchiest pop song that has ever been written about ennui and career dissatisfaction. We have a real-life "Footloose" situation to thank for this ubiquitous new wave hit from 1983. Singer Ian Doroschuk wrote “Safety Dance” after getting kicked out of a club for pogoing. This classic from the 1971 album "Blue" sees Alberta’s folk giant Joni Mitchell at her most poignant and piercing. Given that Mitchell is responsible for an entire career’s worth of poignant and piercing songs like “Free Man In Paris,” “People’s Parties,” “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “River” and “Woodstock,” that’s saying quite a lot.

This unflinching and unsentimental look at teenage sexual frustration from the Toronto new wave band Rough Trade’s 1980 album "Avoid Freud" became one of the most sexually explicit songs to ever appear on the Canadian pop charts when it cracked the top 20 the following year. The lyrics, even the infamous “She makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way” line, might be borderline tame by today’s standards, but the song remains every bit as cool as the day it was released. The sweet, melodic melancholy of this 1994 single from Calgary’s Jann Arden makes the singer’s biggest hit, “Insensitive,” look positively perky by comparison. “Could I Be Your Girl” took home the Single Of The Year Juno in 1995. "Good Enough" was the third single from Sarah McLachlan's 1993 breakthrough album "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy." That album would sell almost three million copies in the U.S. CBC Radio listeners voted this the best Canadian song of all time in a 2005 poll for 50 Tracks: The Canadian Version, and with good reason.

The iconic sixties folk classic by Toronto’s Ian and Sylvia remains one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things to ever come out of this country. And the covers – by the likes of Sarah McLachlan, Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, John Denver, Neil Young and many more – are all pretty swell, too. “Romantic Rights,” the first single from Death From Above 1979’s 2004 debut "You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine" was a perfect introduction to the Toronto duo’s doing it-themed noise rock. As happy as we are about the band's reunion and upcomiong second album, we have problems believing that anything could ever top this. There’s something uniquely Canadian about sampling the theme music from a nerdy CTV game show for your hip-hop track. Which is exactly what Toronto’s Dream Warriors did with the theme from "Definition" (“Soul Bossa Nova” by Quincy Jones) on this massive jazz hip hop hit from 1991. This melancholy, finger-picked ballad by the Vancouver folk-rockers was deservedly their biggest hit and soundtracked countless pity parties when it came out on the late-80s.

Frustrated by the poor treatment that Canada's hip-hop scene was receiving at home, Vancouver rap group The Rascalz assembled a superstar team of fellow Canadian artists to celebrate the talent and resilience of the domestic scene. The resulting track, 1998’s “Northern Touch,” was successful both as a rallying cry and a single. It helped establish Canadian hip-hop as a creative and commercial force and it became the country’s most successful hip-hop single since The Dream Warrior’s “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style” in 1991. Stars's cinematic soft revolution first ignited with this beautiful ballad about star-crossed love and quarter life crises as sung by the band's boy-girl co-lead singers. For a long time, Joel "Deadmau5" Zimmerman was dismissed by the electronic cognoscenti, his Maus head seen as a gimmick to get bros onto the dancefloor. "Ghosts n Stuff" was his chance to prove himself as a mask-less producer and he scored with this instantly iconic EDM track that mixes a distorted vocal with buzzy synths and an infectiously dirty beat.

Many artists have covered Canadian Gene MacLellan’s most famous song, including Elvis, Loretta Lynn, Bing Crosby, and Burl Ives. But it was Anne Murray’s sweetly earnest take on the tune in 1970 that made “Snowbird” a hit and an enduring classic. It was one of the first songs inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. If Carly Rae winds up a one-hit wonder, at least the former "Canadian Idol" also-ran's hit was this wondrous piece of pure pop perfection that was so relatable it pretty much took over popular culture for months. Toronto often doubles as Anycity, USA in TV and film and used to be similarly disguised in Toronto hip-hop for fear hometown pride might make it harder to crossover south of the border. But then Kardi's Tdot anthem arrived, proudly describing the ins and outs of local slang and reminding rappers that it's about both where you're from and where you're at. Two years before his tragic and untimely death, Hamilton, Ontario’s folk phenom released this haunting exploration of the Canadian landscape and the Canadian psyche.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper once called “Northwest Passage” an “unofficial Canadian anthem” in a pro-Mackenzie Pipeline speech, but let’s not hold that against the poor song. Winnipeg’s Weakerthans pack a hell of a lot of hooks and heartbreak into two and a half minutes in this perfect folk punk rock single from the band’s 1997 debut album, "Fallow." The third single from The Hip’s 1992 album, "Fully Completely," was a top 10 hit in Canada and a top 20 hit stateside. Which likely makes it the most successful rock song that quotes an entire passage from a literary novel.

The entire “There’s not simple explanation...” verse is lifted directly from Canadian novelist Hugh MacLennan’s The Watch That Ends The Night, hence the full name of the song, “Courage (For Hugh MacLennan).” Montreal synthpop singer and heartthrob Corey Hart burst onto the new wave and pop scenes in 1983 with this earworm-worthy single from his debut album, "First Offense." Since then, the pop rock classic has been featured everywhere from video game soundtracks to an episode of "Daria" and referenced by the likes of Wyclef Jean and "Degrassi." The title track from Blue Rodeo’s 1992 album "Lost Together" remains a popular and emotional sing-along at the Toronto band’s concerts to this day. And it might just be the best us-against-the-world anthem that roots rock has ever heard. Even removed from the mystery of its release -- back before we knew who Abel Tesfaye was, much less saw him presenting at the MMVA -- or the excitement of hearing such such a new talent, this dark, disturbing debut single remains as powerful and gorgeous as ever, especially when the drums drop.

Some bands have a song so outrageously good, they will always be primarily associated with it. For the Dears, that songs is "Lost in the Plot," where Murray Lightburn goes all-in with his Morrissey impression and wings up with his best vocal ever, especially in the epic climax. The guitars and drums amp up the post-9/11 paranoia while Murray warns: "don't mess our love." The modern music era began in the 1950s, and thanks to then-teenage Anka Canadians were there from the get go. Need proof? "Diana," his first of many hits, went to number one in the U.S. sandwiched between Elvis' "All Shook Up" and Buddy Holly's "That'll Be The Day." It’s not often that good rock and roll and commerce go together so well. “Money City Maniacs” the first single from 1998’s "Navy Blues," is probably the most commercially successful song that Halifax Nova Scotia’s indie rock royalty Sloan ever released. It even appeared in a beer ad in the late nineties.

And yet it’s every bit as brilliant and critically acclaimed as any of the band’s more underground hits like “Underwhelmed,” “Coax Me,” and “The People of the Sky.” "Almost Crimes" was one of the anchor tracks from Broken Social Scene's 2002 commercial breakthrough album "You Forgot It In People." Featuring a pre-iPod commercial fame Leslie Feist, the song helped pave the way for a generation of indie rock collectives. Spirit of the West's alcoholic anthem mixed Canada's Celtic influence with folk-rock to create a song that was guaranteed to get dance floors and residence rooms bouncing in unison as everyone chanted "You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best, I've been gone for a month, I've been drunk since I left." Canada's most acclaimed electronic artist, Richie Hawtin, made his name playing techno parties across the river in Detroit, but he cemented his legend with his minimal techno alter-ego Plastikman. The acid-laced "Plasticine"from his landmark "Sheet One" album is considered one of the greatest techno tracks ever and is a bit more dancefloor targeted then some of Plastikman's more esoteric earphone-focused productions.

The Coca-Cola FIFA World Cup version of this song, “Wavin’ Flag (Celebration Mix)” is a cool sports anthem and the all-star Haiti fundraiser was for a good cause, but we’re even bigger fans of the original “Wavin' Flag” as it appears on Somali-Canadian hip hop artist’s 2009 album, "Troubador," for its powerful testament to the hopes and strengths of the people of Somalia. "1,2,3,4" got the iPod endorsement and the "Sesame Street" remake, but "Mushaboom" was Feist's first proper introduction to the masses with that unique vocal style and a narrative about the pastoral fantasies of hipsters stuck second-floor living without a yard over playfully light instrumentation and a finger-snapped beat That manic pixie dream video didn't hurt. The greatest inspired-by Michael Jackson track ever didn't just jack the "Billie Jean" disco beat, it also lyrically put k-os into late MJ's mindset. Its also a good reminder that Drake didn't invent the skill of singing and rapping.

The post-9/11 era may have felt scary, but it had nothing on the terror of 80s Cold War when the end of the world truly felt nigh. That's the subtextual background of this Bruce Cockburn classic, later covered beautifully by Barenaked Ladies, which gives the song much of its power. Lines like "Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight" don't hurt, either. Admittedly something of a deep cut, despite its former status as the band's go-to encore, Hustle Rose might not be as well known as, say Dead Disco, but it should be. Perfectly capturing what makes Metric so special, the song starts off like an Anthems of a 17-Year-Old Girl sequel before settling into a finger-picked ballad and then exploding into an dance-rock epic soaring on a crunchy guitar, double-time drums and synths aimed squarely at the outer solar system.

Right around the time the music industry was painting Neil Young as the godfather of this newfangled "grunge" movement in 1992 he pulled a swerve and put out the decidedly not-grunge country album "Harvest Moon." Young collaborators Pearl Jam have covered the title track during their shows. Long before every pop starlet broke free of her pop and/or Disney past with a racy new image and a leaked nude photo, Ottawa’s Alanis Morissette, formerly known as Alanis, ditched her neon crop tops and mall pop past with this blisteringly angry, confessional, and raunchy alternative hit in 1995. Dave Coulier has both confirmed and denied that he is the subject of the song’s woman scorned fury. This single from cowpunk rebel-turned-grand dame of Canadian song K.D. Lang’s 1992 album, "Ingénue," topped the charts in Canada, the U.S. and U.K and earned Lang a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and an MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Music Video.

If imitation is, indeed, the best form of flattery, then The Rolling Stones flattered the crap out of Lang and “Constant Craving” with their 2007 song, “Anybody Seen My Baby?” The Stones later gave her and her songwriting partner a writing credit for the tune. Before Drake's OVO and its crew love, there was Baby Blue, a DJ collective that came out of the party and mixtape scenes. In 2001, they put out their second compilation album containing this criminally underrated gem featuring Can-Hop legend Choclaire and American rapper Mims. It's a surprisingly street-focused club jam with an indelible pinging beat and anthemic rhymes showing up the haters with sheer dexterity. Joel Plaskett's old band Thrush Hermit were victims of bad timing, having been signed to a major label after alt-rock's mid-90s decline and then releasing their CanRock masterpiece "Clayton Park" just before the early-00s indie rock revival. But while that impacted sales, it didn't affect songs like this East Coast neo-retro riff-rocker which to this day make me bummed out that they broke up.

Late country legend Stompin' Tom Connors' ode to hard-living Northern Ontario miners remains one of his best known songs. Connors knew the north well, having scored his first big singing break at the Maple Leaf Hotel in Timmins, Ontario, home of Shania Twain. There is no bottom lower in hip-hop than the one reserved for a half-white, Jewish, Canadian child star, even if he grew up in a good neighbourhood, but "Started From the Bottom" isn't Drake's song anymore. It belongs to everyone now, and much like "Hold On, We're Going Home" boasts his best singing turn, this is Drake in his fiercest rap form. We will be hearing this song forever. The meta nostalgia of Bryan Adam's greatest hit runs deep--from "Got my first real six-string" onward, it inspires warm feelings for the 80s and the 60s, for any summer anytime, really.

Despite its propulsive riffs and soaring guitar solos, it's actually a bleak song about growing up and realizing that your dreams didn't come true, that "nothing can last forever." And yet this 1983 song somehow has, and that incongruity gives it an optimism it didn't have at the time. Orillia folk legend Gordon Lightfoot reached the top of the Canadian charts and the top 5 of the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 with this beautifully ponderous song, inspired by his divorce, from the album "Sit Down Young Stranger." It’s probably the only folk song that sounds almost as good as a disco number. Arcade Fire have never been shy about crafting anthems, but none have been quite as anthemic as "Rebellion (Lies)" off their breakthrough debut album, "Funeral." As the song gathers momentum, you can almost imagine Win and Regine leading an uprising against the liars-that-be. One of the best songs of all-time according to Rolling Stone magazine, this narrative tale from '68 was inspired by Band member Levon Helm's connection to the American Deep South.

Artists from Diana Ross to Panic At The Disco to The Muppets have covered it. Taken from the electro-rock duo's 2011 album "Sound Kapital," the SOCAN Prize-nominated song "When I Get Back" chronicles a traveler's need to find their way home even as it induces culture shock with its synthesized sound. A North American number one hit for The Guess Who in 1970, this song has been interpreted as anti-American over the years, though songwriter Jim Kale denies that assertion. Lenny Kravitz's 1999 cover of the song hit number three on the rock charts. Pitchfork considers Constantines 2003 album "Shine A Light" one of the best of the 2000s. The marquee track for the album was the urgent "Nighttime Anytime (It’s Alright)." Countless Cohen songs could have made this list, and many might call for would want "Hallelujah" or "Suzanne" but "Everybody Knows" it's hard to deny Cohen as beat apocalyptic prophet.

Presumably with a black turtleneck on, he pessimistically baritones that the boat is leaking, the fight is fixed, the good guys lost and the plague is coming over synth stabs and flamenco guitar licks. First there's that sample-n-scratch-bolstered breakbeat, which places the song in its historical era long before Maestro proclaims that "it's 89 y'all, not Beethoven's 5th." Yet it sounds as fresh today as it did a quarter century ago, and can just as quickly fill a dancefloor. Then there are the rhymes, a tough yet erudite demonstration that not only was Maestro "a hip-hop tic-tac-tician" but that he was "not American." That may seem like an obvious line now, but back then Canadian rappers were loathe to admit such on wax in hopes of crossing over down south. Maestro stayed true to his northern roots, broke into the US top 40 anyway, and held the best-selling Canadian hip-hop single title for two decades. Yes, it's still a throw down.

 Share Both Sides, Later - latimes POP MUSIC Both Sides, Later With the release of two 'best of' albums, Joni Mitchell looks back at her hits--and misses--and the artistry that's earning renewed recognition. December 08, 1996 |Robert Hilburn | Robert Hilburn is The Times' pop music critic You can tell a lot about Joni Mitchell's humor and spunk from just the titles of her two recent "best of" albums on Reprise Records. One is "Hits." It contains 15 of her best-known songs--from the wistful "Both Sides Now," which she wrote in 1967 when she was just 23, to the declarative "Help Me," a cornerstone of 1974's "Court and Spark," the album that cemented Mitchell's reputation as one of the most influential and acclaimed writers of the modern pop era.

The other collection is "Misses." It's a 14-song package that focuses chiefly on the post-"Court" material--from the social commentary of "Dog Eat Dog" to the ambitious narrative sweep of "Hejira"--that moved away from the accessible, folk-accented textures of the singer's earlier work. "I tend to be dismissive of my early songs in favor of championing my underdog children," Mitchell says, explaining why she insisted that Reprise release "Misses" along with the "Hits" package. "I think the songs after 'Court and Spark' show a lot of growth and I worry that much of it is destined for obscurity." Mitchell, 53, hopes the "Misses" album and the attention she is receiving in what she calls her "season of honors" help rescue the post-"Court and Spark" material. In September, she was presented with the Governor General's Performing Arts Award in Canada, and she'll be honored Wednesday at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel with a lifetime achievement award by the National Academy of Songwriters. She'll also be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on May 15 in Cleveland.

Despite the awards, Mitchell--rivaled perhaps only by Bob Dylan during the rock era in combining strong literary sensibilities with an uncompromising eye for life's rituals and rites--wonders whether people understand her real musical vision, which has moved freely over the years to incorporate world music, jazz and classical textures. She's well aware, for instance, that she made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in her fourth year of eligibility. "Well, it's a boys' club isn't it?" she says of the Hall of Fame. "And it's kind of a joke. . . . There are so many people in it. It's like a hockey hall of fame where they let in anyone who has ever scored a goal. But then, I never considered myself a rock artist or a folk artist. People just saw a girl with an acoustic guitar and said, 'Folk singer.' But to me, my roots were in classical music." The Canadian-born Mitchell, a Los Angeles resident for years, declines an invitation to pick out 10 favorites from her body of work, but she agreed to react to a list of 10 of my favorite Mitchell songs.

On the eve of this week's dinner, she also expressed some of her views about songwriting and tried to clear up what she feels are some misconceptions about her work. The songs are in chronological order. CHELSEA MORNING (1967) I wrote that in Philadelphia after some girls who worked in this club where I was playing . . . found all this colored slag glass in an alley. We collected a lot of it and built these glass mobiles with copper wire and coat hangers. I took mine back to New York and put them in my window on West 16th Street in the Chelsea District. The sun would hit the mobile and send these moving colors all around the room. As a young girl, I found that to be a thing of beauty. There's even a reference to the mobile in the song. It was a very young and lovely time . . .before I had a record deal. I think it's a very sweet song, but I don't think of it as part of my best work. To me, most of those early songs seem like the work of an ingenue.

BOTH SIDES NOW (1967) I was reading Saul Bellow's "Henderson the Rain King" on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He's on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did. BIG YELLOW TAXI (1970) I wrote "Big Yellow Taxi" on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart . . . this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song. When it first came out, it was a regional hit in Hawaii because people there realized their paradise was being chewed up. It took 20 years for that song to sink in to people most other places in the country.

That is a powerful little song because there have been cases in a couple of cities of parking lots being torn up and turned into parks because of it. ALL I WANT (1971) about big_yellow_taxi - About Joni Mitchells Big Yellow Taxi Joni Mitchell about big_yellow_taxi about big_yellow_taxi - About Joni Mitchells Big Yellow... SCHOOL View Full Document About Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi… Joni Mitchell (1943 – still around) is a folk singer, song-writer and artist. She suffered from polio as a child, and was told she would never walk; she used her voice as a tool to drive her determination —and she defied the odds to live a healthy life. Although born in Canada, she is considered one of the finest folksong writers in modern American music, having written most of her own songs and many for other famous singers (like the song Both Sides Now , which made Judy Collins a star). She wrote Big Yellow Taxi in 1970 on a trip to Hawaii; it is about her perception of Honolulu. She saw the beautiful mountains in the distance, then looked down to see a huge parking lot below her.

The song has become an environmental anthem of sorts, especially the iconic lines, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” and “they take all the trees and put ‘em in a tree museum and they charge all the people a dollar and a half just to see them.” The song has been recorded 372 times by other artists! This preview has intentionally blurred sections. Sign up to view the full version. This is the end of the preview. Sign up to access the rest of the document. TERM Joni Mitchell — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm joni mitchell Joni Mitchell, CC, (born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943 in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada) is a Canadian musician, singer-songwriter, poet and painter. A highly influential artist, she has received eight Grammy Awards during her career, with the first coming in 1969 and the most recent in 2008.

She received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, with the citation describing her as "one of the most important female recording artists of the rock era" and "a powerful influence… read more Joni Mitchell Library - Joni Mitchell: Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, January 2007 Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame January 2007 (b. Fort MacLeod, Alberta, 7 November, 1943) MODERN ERA, 1956 to 1981 Raw truth, pointed irony and unsettling beauty are words that describe both the artist and her art. Joni Mitchell - an accomplished singer, painter, poet and photographer -- is one of the most prolific, influential female recording artists of the twentieth century. A brilliant surrealist and gifted poet, Mitchell blends musical complexity with intellectually astute lyrics, creating a sound that is quintessentially her own. Driven by her passionate intensity and unbending free spirit, Joni Mitchell has succeeded in breaking pop boundaries and continually refusing to abide by the rules of the recording industry. From the earliest stages of her versatile career, Mitchell has garnered respect and admiration from both her musical peers and her expansive and expectant fan base.

Throughout her artistic journey, she has seamlessly evolved her raw self-expression through folk music to jazz to rock n roll, world music and avant-garde styles. She accomplished this at a time when other artists dared not step out of the confines of pop music in such a bold fashion. Her deeply personal and colorful lyrics and innovative sounds have touched millions of people for over four decades and the creative legacy she has bestowed through her genius is unsurpassed. Born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943 in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Mitchell experienced her artistic calling from the age of seven when she convinced her parents to give her piano lessons so she could release the melodies she heard in her head. She also discovered her drawing skills early in life and recalls her first creative outbursts, inspired by events such as watching the movie Bambi, which disturbed her so much that she felt compelled to draw out her emotions. Like many children of her era, Mitchell contracted Polio at the age of nine, another incident that she tributes as a starting point of her true identity as an artist. As a teenager, Mitchell was a self-taught ukulele player, which she bought to entertain at parties, not being able to afford a guitar.

In 1965, Roberta Joan Anderson enrolled in the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, but soon dismissed her classes as not creative enough for her standards. She sang Judy Collins songs in Calgary pubs and later that same year moved to Toronto with the aspiration of becoming a folk singer. Struggling to get into the music business and sustaining herself through low-paying department store jobs, Mitchell soon decided to marry Chuck Mitchell, whom she had met in Calgary. The pair moved to Detroit where they both performed as folk singers in various clubs. The marriage and partnership of Joan and Chuck Mitchell dissolved within a year and a half and she then moved to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a recording artist. A relative unknown, Mitchell quickly cultivated a cult following as a live performer and talented songwriter. This distinction was owed in part to the fact that her songs were being performed and recorded by well-established folk and country artists, such as Tom Rush, George Hamilton IV, Canadian born Buffy Sainte-Marie and Judy Collins, whose cover of Both Sides Now in 1968 became Joni's first hit song.

In 1967, David Crosby stumbled upon a Joni Mitchell performance in Florida, and was so awestruck by what he heard and saw that he became one of the steering wheels of Mitchell's first recording contract on Reprise Records. Mitchell was scheduled to perform at Woodstock in 1969 but was advised by her manager not to appear in case the well-publicized traffic jams preventing artists from leaving the concert area would jeopardize her scheduled appearance on the Dick Cavett Show the following Monday. Her frustration and regret at not having been able to participate in this life-changing musical event led her to write the song Woodstock, which ironically went on to become an anthem for her generation. The song was a success for Crosby, Stills & Nash later that year. Following on the mild success of her album Ladies of the Canyon, Mitchell took a year off from the recording industry to travel and seek creative inspiration. From that period of spiritual introspection in 1971, came Mitchell's intense and magical album Blue, which became an instant classic and critically acclaimed, firmly establishing Mitchell as one of the most important songwriters of her time.

Since her early folk roots, Mitchell has ventured her talents in jazz music, experimental and synth-pop, working with greats and pioneers of various music genres, such as Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Willie Nelson, Peter Gabriel, Thomas Dolby, Weather Report and Chaka Khan. Her poetry set to music has been performed the world over, by such diverse artists as Frank Sinatra, Chet Atkins, Glenn Campbell, Neil Diamond, Crosby, Stills & Nash, James Taylor, Bing Crosby, Willie Nelson, The Byrds, and countless others. Mitchell has been the recipient of many Gold and Platinum albums, two Juno Awards and five Grammy Awards. In 1981, Joni Mitchell was inducted in the Canadian Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with a personal presentation by ex-Prime Minister Pierre-Elliot Trudeau. In October 1988 she was awarded the Premio Tenco during the San Remo Song Festival in Italy, received the Billboard Century Award in 1995, and on May 6, 1996 Joni received the coveted Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Joni was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2004, Joni Mitchell was made companion of Order of Canada. Mitchell recently re-released her album Hejira, which is seen by many as one of the moodiest of her albums, in celebration of its 30th anniversary. She is also currently at work on her first new album in nearly a decade. A mature artist of great courage and integrity, Joni Mitchell's compelling art forms have entrenched her within the Canadian and international music scene as a sensitive and vital contributor. She lends a painter's vision to all of her work and, with a painter's ability to be self-adjudicating; she refused to work with a producer, allowing her work to develop naturally and in a most original way. Having only recorded two songs in her career in standard tuning, the bulk of her repertoire comes from a palate of nearly sixty original open tunings. This produced some very fresh chordal movements, which are currently being studied in American music schools today.

The strength and uncompromising manner she brings to each of her artistic explorations continues to fascinate and amaze both industry members and music fans alike. SONG INDUCTEE: BOTH SIDES NOW MODERN ERA, 1956 to 1981 YEAR: 1967 LYRICIST & COMPOSER: JONI MITCHELL (b. Fort Macleod, Alberta, 7 November 1943) Both Sides Now, also known as Clouds, is a classic recorded by countless artists looking to share a piece of Mitchell's songwriting genius. Written in 1967 and inspired by a passage from the book Henderson The Rain King by Saul Bellow, Both Sides Now was an international hit for Judy Collins, who recorded the song in 1968 and won a Grammy Award later the same year for Best Female Folk Performance.' With its soul-searching, Zen-like lyricism and gentle melody, Both Sides Now is a meditation on fantasy and reality, each verse being divided into both a naive and an experienced way of looking at clouds, love and life. The song is about childhood's end.

It's about shedding the fairytales of Disney and facing the world as a realist. It isn't the voice of hope nor is it the voice of resignation. It is an attempt to find a way of conducting oneself in a world becoming increasingly violent and perverse. Judy Collins has said, "Joni came down from Canada to add the poetic lustre of her songs to our musical lives. Joni's songs are delicate and feminine and strong&like she is. Collins told Mitchell, "You can break my heart anytime you like. Just open your mouth and sing." Cover artists include: Dave Van Ronk, Judy Collins, Tori Amos, Claudine Longet, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra, Anne Murray, Neil Diamond, Robert Goulet, Willie Nelson, Paul Young and Clannad, Chet Atkins, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespy, Gabor Szabo, Uncle Seth, and many more. SONG INDUCTEE: WOODSTOCK MODERN ERA, 1956 to 1981 YEAR: 1970 LYRICIST & COMPOSER: JONI MITCHELL (b.

Fort Macleod, Alberta, 7 November 1943) Joni Mitchell's Woodstock was composed on the weekend of the infamous Woodstock festival in 1969 and became a hit for Mitchell's close friends, Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1970. Disappointed because her management refused her permission to enter the Woodstock festival site due to an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show the following Monday, Mitchell resigned herself to watching the festival on television in New York City. Saddened by missing the event of her generation, Joni was inspired to write the song by imagining she was there. Mitchell recalls: "It hurt&it was like I was the grounded daughter, but the boys get to go. Most of the song was written on the last night of the [festival], out of frustration of being disallowed to go. Crosby, Stills and Nash heard it later and asked permission to record it." Crosby, Stills & Nash flew back from the festival on Monday night and made a surprise appearance on the Dick Cavett Show, on the night of Mitchell's appearance. Her heart sank as the band described Woodstock for the audience.

Woodstock soon became referred to as an anthem for a generation and for the late 1960's. It was also noted in Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems where she said it was one of the greatest poems of our generation. Cover artists include: the Matthews Southern Comfort Band, Stevie Wonder, Big Country, Steve Fisk, Barry Miles, Bonnie Raitt, Spin Doctors, Led Zeppelin, Dread Zeppelin, Fairport Convention, John Williams, David Lahm, George Kahn, Richie Havens, and many more. SONG INDUCTEE: BIG YELLOW TAXI MODERN ERA. 1956 to 1981 YEAR: 1975 LYRICIST & COMPOSER: JONI MITCHELL (b. Fort Macleod, Alberta, 7 November 1943) Big Yellow Taxi is Joni Mitchell's most recognized song despite having only reached number 24 on the Billboard charts upon its release in 1975 from her album Ladies of the Canyon.

Admired for Mitchell's unique melody and soothing vocal work, the song currently ranks as number nine on CBC Radio's Top 50: The Canadian Version. Big Yellow Taxi was written in 1973 after Mitchell was in Hawaii peering out of her hotel window hoping to glimpse the breathtaking scenery, only to see an enormous parking lot. The song is about taking nature for granted. Although the parking lot in Hawaii was the point of inspiration for the song, it was written for people everywhere surrounded by natural beauty and not aware what a gift it is. Big Yellow Taxi was written as a nursery rhyme, like London Bridges Falling Down and Ring Around the Rosy . This seemingly naive lyric was about great atrocity and Joni hoped that children would sing it in order to wake up adults. This was her greatest hope for this song. Cover artists include: Green Day, Bob Dylan, Amy Grant, Sarah McLachlan, Cher, Percy Faith, James Taylor, Counting Crows, Joe Dassin, Vanessa Carlton, Big Country, Dick Hyman, Chris Thomas King, Sara Hamman, Monty Alexander, and many others. Samples have been used in Janet Jackson's 1997 single Got Till It's Gone.

SONG INDUCTEE: HELP ME MODERN ERA, 1956 to 1981 YEAR: 1973 LYRICIST & COMPOSER: JONI MITCHELL (b. Fort Macleod, Alberta, 7 November 1943) Joni Mitchell's best selling single to date, Help Me succeeded in reaching number seven on the Billboard charts in 1973 and stayed there for 19 weeks. From her album Court and Spark, the beautiful love ballad reflects Mitchell's love of jazz, blended with her unique folk touch. Under pressure from her record company to produce a hit, Joni attempted to play her music with existing session players. Unfortunately, it was in vogue at the time for rhythm sections to have the bass played with dead strings and the drummer would play with a pillow in his kit drum to keep the bottom end in the background. When Joni insisted that she wanted a more full bodied and resonant bottom end, she ran up against nothing but resistance from the musicians, who were insistent on conforming to the current trend.

At the same time Stevie Wonder was also craving and achieving a more prominent bottom sound so Joni took her engineer, Henry Louie, over to one of his sessions to show him that it was technically possible. In Help Me, Mitchell sings about one's loss of strength when faced with feelings of love for another. How one feels threatened by love and the weaknesses and insecurities it brings us, rather than surrendering ourselves to feelings of joy and happiness. Cover artists include: k.d. lang, Wynonna Judd, Divine Brown, Michelle Williams, Guv'ner, Nicole Kramer, John Hart, Mandy Moore and Ginger Mackenzie SONG INDUCTEE: YOU TURN ME ON, I'M A RADIO MODERN ERA, 1956 to 1981 YEAR: 1972 LYRICIST & COMPOSER: JONI MITCHELL (b. Fort Macleod, Alberta, 7 November 1943) You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio was Joni Mitchell's first hit single from her 1972 album For the Roses, reaching the Billboard top 20 in January 1973.

The country-inspired song about the struggle to maintain one's innocence and vision in the recording industry was a lighter step away from Mitchell's usually introspective lyrics. Featuring seductive lyrics peppered with sexual innuendos and humorous touches, You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio was written as a joke for David Geffen who was prodding her to write a hit single Graham Nash took part in sessions for the song, and his harmonica part was used on the final release. The song also features a beautifully orchestrated chorus. Cover artists include: Wynonna Judd, Iris Koch, Little Miss Higgins, Jane Hall, Beth Nielsen Chapman, The Cantrells, Carmina, Steve Goldberger, Gail Davies, and many more. Printed from the official Joni Mitchell website. Permanent link: Copyright protected material on this website is used in accordance with 'Fair Use', for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis, and will be removed at the request of the copyright owner(s). Please read 'Notice and Procedure for Making Claims of Copyright Infringement' at JoniMitchell.com/legal.cfm

Question: Which Canadian born folk singer wrote and recorded the hit song, "Big Yellow Taxi"?
Answer: JONI MITCHELL