Blue is the fourth studio album by the Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. It was released on June 22, 1971, through Reprise Records. The album was entirely written and produced by Mitchell, and was recorded throughout late 1970 and early 1971 at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Created in the aftermath of her breakup with Graham Nash and during an intense relationship with James Taylor, Blue explores the different facets of relationships against sparse musical backings featuring Mitchell's acoustic guitar, piano and Appalachian dulcimer.
Upon release, Blue was a critical and commercial success. It reached the top 10 in the UK and Canada, and the top 15 in the US, while its first single, "Carey" was Mitchell's second to crack the Billboard Hot 100. It received positive reviews, though Mitchell would reject the "confessional" label many critics would impose on her in the wake of the album.
Retrospectively, Blue is regarded as Mitchell's masterpiece. Rolling Stone included the album at number three on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the album frequently appears on other similar lists. It has been noted for its influence on the singer-songwriter movement and its songs have been covered by a wide range of artists. In 1986, Blue was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for US sales in excess of 1 million copies.
Background Mitchell's stature as an artist and performer grew throughout 1970, and her album Ladies of the Canyon was a critical and commercial success. She was voted the world's top female singer in a Melody Maker poll that year,Hinton 2000, p. 121 and in August, she played the Isle of Wight Festival. Biographer Brian Hinton describes this experience as a "public initiation under fire", due to the hostile, drug-addled audience and behind-the-scenes conflicts.Hinton 2000, p. 117Hinton 2000, p. 118 Despite her heightened success, this was a tumultuous period for Mitchell, who had ended her relationship with fellow musician Graham Nash in 1969.Yaffe 2017, p. 122 At the time of the breakup, Mitchell went on a trip to Greece and throughout Europe as a whole, a sojourn which would lead to the creation of some of the material on Blue.
At the tail end of 1970, Mitchell played a Greenpeace benefit concert, Amchitka, with James Taylor, with whom she was romantically involved.Yaffe 2017, p. 127 Biographer David Yaffe notes that despite their seemingly idealistic connection, both were troubled by personal demons, with Taylor in particular suffering from depression and heroin addiction.Yaffe 2017, p. 128 Yaffe also states that while their relationship would not last, Mitchell "stayed with him, long enough and deep enough that she emerged with a batch of new songs, some of them darker and more disturbing than ever." This period leading up to the creation of Blue was extremely emotionally taxing for Mitchell, with "years of bottled-up melancholy pouring out", which she attributed to past and then-current events such as giving her daughter up for adoption, her dissolved marriage to Chuck Mitchell, and the relationships which followed.Yaffe 2017, p. 132
Writing and recording
Most of the songs on Blue would be written on the Appalachian dulcimer, an instrument she discovered at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival and brought with her during her trip to Greece that same year. The dulcimer was custom-built and sold to her at the festival by luthier Joellen Lapidus for $200; Lapidus nicknamed the instrument the "Wild Columbine" for its carved sound holes. Yaffe notes how Mitchell's guitar playing style had developed around this time, a percussive, "slap"-heavy style which displayed the influence of Stephen Stills' "aggressive" guitar playing yet remained "inimitably hers".
Of the songs written for the album, "All I Want" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" would be the final two songs composed.Yaffe 2017, p. 133 Conversely, "Little Green" dated back to before Mitchell's first album, dating back to 1966 and being copyrighted in 1967.Hinton 2000, p. 129 According to Peter Kearns, a lyrical sketch dating back to the spring of 1970 appears to have been the genesis of "My Old Man".Kearns 2021, p. 55 Mitchell would perform an unfinished version of the song in September at the BBC Television Centre. "Carey" was one of the album's songs stemming from Mitchell's 1970 Greece trip, and was inspired by a "fiery red-headed and red-bearded man wearing a white turban" named Carey Raditz whom she met in a restaurant. The initial draft was meaner, which Mitchell has stated was in response to the man's own unkind attitude, while the final cut was rewritten to have a lighter mood.Kearns 2021, p. 58 Stills contributed bass and acoustic guitar on the track, which was originally slated to be the album opener.
As with her previous two albums, Mitchell recorded Blue at A&M Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles.Yaffe 2017, p. 129 At this time, fellow singer-songwriter Carole King was recording Tapestry (1971) in Studio B. King would recall in her memoir the communal, cordial atmosphere between the artists in close proximity, and Mitchell provided backing vocals on both King's Tapestry and Taylor's Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon (1971). Mitchell recorded in Studio C, which contained a coveted red Steinway piano; both King and Mitchell vied for Studio C to use said piano, with Mitchell reserving the room most often.Yaffe 2017, p. 130 James Taylor contributed acoustic guitar to "All I Want", "California" and "A Case of You".Kearns 2021, p. 54Kearns 2021, p. 59 Taylor later remarked that engineer Henry Lewy pushed the musicians to "keep it simple" when recording the song, though Taylor also felt the song's sparseness allowed him creative freedom: "Playing along with her spare dulcimer accompaniment, I was free to substitute whatever chords I felt." Percussion was provided by session drummer Russ Kunkel. Aside from the few guest musicians, Blue was recorded "in near-seclusion", due in part to Mitchell's emotional state at the time.O'Brien 2001, p. 136 Mitchell later stated, "we had to lock the doors to make that album". Recording was completed in March 1971. An early track listing for the album had been delivered to Reprise, which opened with "Carey" and closed with "River". This early track order contained two songs that would be cut from the final album, "Hunter" and "Urge for Going". However, both of these would be replaced by the album's final opener and closer, "All I Want" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard", after Mitchell urged Reprise to halt the pressing.
Music and lyrics
Side one
The album opens with "All I Want", displaying the musical palette of dulcimer, guitar and percussion.Hinton 2000, p. 128 Yaffe notes that this dulcimer is the very first sound the listener hears on Blue, with its "jangl[ing]" chords and riff being comparable to "the starting of an engine".Yaffe 2017, p. 133 According to Karen O'Brien, the song reflects both the "ambivalence of a love affair", as well as the "impeccable intentions" with "accompany the doubts" within said relationship.O'Brien 2001, p. 137 Simon Vozick-Levinson of Rolling Stone Australia notes that the lyrics' "punch-drunk rhyming schemes" evoke the "rush" of a new romantic relationship, while Mitchell searches for "an ideal kind of relationship, one that's freeing for everyone involved, and perhaps one that's too good to exist." "My Old Man" is more upbeat, describing what O'Brien calls a "love affair without regrets or doubts". Due to the more optimistic tone of the song, Yaffe considers it a "reminder of an earlier time, a sweetness of the past."Yaffe 2017, p. 135 Kearns highlights the song's "quazi-jazz piano arpeggios", "staccato 8th-note coda", and "quirky hook" as defining musical characteristics, also noting similarities in mood to King's "It's Too Late" (1971).Kearns 2021, p. 56 Peter Kearns describes "Little Green" as a "major-key lullaby" with a "hint of melancholy". Some biographers have described the lyrics as "impenetrable"Hinton 2000, p. 129 and "cryptic", though its meaning has become more widely recognized in later years as being about Mitchell's daughter whom she gave up for adoption in 1965.O'Brien 2001, p. 138O'Brien 2001, p. 139 Despite its melancholic tone, some writers also note an optimistic side to the song, with O'Brien finding it to be "full of promise for a happier life ahead than the one Joni felt she could provide for the child".
"Carey" returns the album to a more "light and positive" mood, which Kearns describes as somewhat "exotic" due to the use of congas and dulcimer.Kearns 2021, p. 58 O'Brien describes the genre as "pre-reggae calypso" with lyrics inspired by her encounter with Raditz in Greece. Hinton finds the song to be a "return to nature" and rock-and-roll, with the music driven by Kunkel's percussion. In a 2014 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mitchell remarked that the lyrics captured her at a time where her "hair was matted from washing it in seawater for months, I had beach tar on my feet and I was flea-bitten - this was very rugged living. I also realized I was still heartbroken about my split with Graham [Nash]." The first side of the album concludes with its title track, which Kearns describes as simply "a human working through whatever dark feelings were coming up – composition as therapy". The lyric "Acid booze and ass / Needles, guns and grass" has spawned multiple interpretations; O'Brien cites this line in summarizing the song as a "cautionary tale of the other diversions sought by the Me Generation", while Kearns considers it to be a list of "options for coping with [an] emotional affliction". Hinton notes the juxtaposition of the "symbolic and the gross", going on to state that while the song can be considered a lullaby, it is one "to a damaged adult, and one full of pain."Hinton 2000, p. 130
Side two
The album's second side begins with "California", which Kearns describes as a diary entry spurred by Mitchell's homesickness for California while traveling through France. The song contains further lyrical references to Raditz, described as the "redneck on a Grecian isle". The lyrics juxtapose "news of the deepening conflict in Vietnam destroying dreams of peace and love" with Mitchell's desire to "run back to the safety of home" and themes of homesickness.Hinton 2000, p. 130 Yaffe considers the song a "portrait" of both Mitchell and the listener "at the dawn of the 1970s".Yaffe 2017, p. 146 "This Flight Tonight" is played in a low, A-flat open tuning which creates a sound Kearns likens to a "world music vibe" similar to that of Led Zeppelin's "Friends" (1970). He considers the track to be one of the album's "more challenging" compositions, calling it a "thinking-man's deep-cut" with "semi-psychedelic" elements. Hinton describes Mitchell's vocal as "startlingly intimate", while Yaffe notes the song as one which describes the narrator's attachment to a lover who is a "composite" of real people, rather than being inspired by one person in particular.Yaffe 2017, p. 143